I pick the booth with the best view of the parking lot and the worst upholstery.
The red vinyl under my thighs has a long crack that scratches the back of my leg every time I shift. A strip of duct tape runs along the tear, smoothed over by a thousand other people trying not to look like they’re waiting for something. The air smells like burnt coffee, fryer oil, and a sugary syrup that clings to the back of my throat.
Outside the big square window, the highway hums with a steady stream of cars. Every time headlights swing across the glass, they catch the silhouette of the mill on the far side of the river: brick tower, broken windows, rusted ribs of metal jutting into the sky. It sits in the fog like a ghost that refuses to get off the stage.
My phone screen glows on the table between the chipped sugar caddy and the napkin dispenser. The anonymous email sits at the top of my inbox: I was there the night at the mill. I left the voicemail. I’ll talk in person. No names. No cameras. The subject line just said: For the girl on the staircase.
“You good, hon?” the waitress asks, topping off my coffee without waiting for my answer.
“Yeah, thank you,” I say. My voice comes out too bright. I stir in cream just to have something to do, watching the swirl cloud the surface. The spoon clinks against porcelain, loud in the low murmur of the café.
The door opens behind me with a jangle of bells. Cold damp air slides across my shoulders. I look up, heart jerking, and track the new arrival in the reflection of the window: an old guy in a Steelers jacket, cap low over his eyes. He nods to the waitress, heads straight to the counter, doesn’t glance at me.
I exhale slowly, fingers flattening against my notebook. I wrote “MILL PA – ANON” across the top of the first page in block letters. Underneath, I listed every question I promised myself I’d ask. My pen has already decorated the margins with little lightning bolts and question marks.
The bells jangle again. This time it’s a mom with two kids wearing identical puffy coats. The kids race toward the claw machine by the restrooms while she apologizes to the waitress with tired eyes. I check my phone: ten minutes past our agreed meeting time.
Jazz’s voice rattles around in my head from our last late-night phone call: “Meet them in public. Share your location. No hotel rooms, no cars, no remote cabins, Quinn. You don’t want to be the B-plot in your own podcast.”
I text her a photo of the coffee mug and the laminated menu, then add, Still waiting. Mill is right outside the window. Feels like a bad set designer’s metaphor.
She replies with a skull emoji and, You got this. Record everything. Also eat something that isn’t caffeine.
The bells ring a third time.
I look up before I can talk myself out of it. The person in the doorway pauses, scanning the room with the same jittery energy that’s been buzzing in my bloodstream for the last twenty minutes. Hoodie pulled up, jeans stiff with road dust, overnight bag slung across one shoulder. Not old, not young. Somewhere solidly in the middle, with shadows under their eyes and a tension in their jaw that mirrors my own.
Our gazes catch. Their hand tightens on the strap of the bag. They head toward my booth.
“Quinn?” they ask.
“Yeah.” I push my notebook aside to make room. “Thanks for coming.”
They slide into the seat across from me, shoulders hunched like they’re bracing for impact. Up close, I can see the faint impression of a wedding band, a smear of what looks like finger paint on the cuff of their sleeve, and a visitor’s badge still clipped to the outside of their bag from some corporate office nowhere near here.
“I don’t want my name,” they say before I can even offer coffee. “On anything. Not in your notes, not on your… on your board.” Their gaze flicks to my notebook like it might explode.
“Totally fair,” I say. “I already wrote you down as ‘Anon PA.’ I can change it. Pick any alias you want.”
They huff out a humorless breath. “Yeah, ’cause aliases worked out great for the last girl.”
Lila. I don’t say her name yet. I tap my phone, pull up the voice recorder app, and set it face-up between us. “Before we start, I need to ask if you’re okay with me recording. Audio only. I won’t use it without your consent, and I can distort your voice on the show.”
Their gaze flicks to the mill through the window, then back to me. The river fog curls around the base of the structure, softening the hard angles.
“If I walk out without saying this,” they say, “I keep hearing that damn sound in my head every night. So yeah. Record.”
I hit the red button. The timer starts counting up in tiny numbers. Four seconds, five, six. The screen throws a faint reflection of my face back at me, eyes wide, hair frizzing from the damp.
“You can stop at any time,” I say. “I’m not law enforcement, I’m not a lawyer. I’m just… curious and maybe too stubborn.”
“You’re the only one who called me back,” they say. “When I left that message, I waited for, I don’t know, someone from a union, or a reporter with a tie, I don’t know what I expected. Got a spam call and a wrong number. Then you.”
“I’m glad you picked up,” I say. My leg bounces under the table. “Can you tell me about that night at the mill? In your own words, whatever you remember.”
They press their palms flat against the table, like they need the contact to anchor themselves. Their nails are short, bitten down.
“It was late,” they start. “Later than it should’ve been, with kids on set. We were on, like, hour… fourteen?” They look at me for confirmation, for someone who understands the math.
“Standard totally-not-abusive teen drama hours,” I say. Their mouth twitches, just barely. “You were a PA?”
“Yeah. Production assistant, professional coffee mule, clipboard holder, stair counter.” They swallow. “The mill smelled like wet metal and old oil. They flooded the lower level earlier that day for a shot, and nobody bothered to dry anything. You know that tang when you lick a battery?” They wrinkle their nose. “Like that in the air.”
My chest tightens. “You were on the staircase?”
“They wanted this shot where the two girls—your girl, Nora, and Lila—argue on the stairs. Very dramatic, echo, railings, all that. They put me at the top to keep background from wandering into frame and to make sure nobody slipped.”
“Irony,” I mutter, then bite my tongue. “Sorry. Go on.”
“We did a few takes,” they say. “Nora hit her marks, the other kid hit hers. Lines about ‘you don’t get to walk away from me’ or something. I don’t remember the exact words. I remember the way Lila kept grabbing the rail with one hand, like she didn’t trust it. The metal left gray dust on her palm.”
My pen moves across the page without me thinking—gray dust on palm, rail = unsafe. The waitress sets a plate of fries between us, courtesy of Jazz’s text, and I flinch at the sudden clatter.
“Sorry,” the waitress says, backing away.
The PA watches her go, then lowers their voice. “Between takes, I heard them. Not in character. The crew was moving lights, sound guy checking levels, but I was close. Lila was pissed.”
“Pissed about what?” I ask.
“The stairs. The hours. The way they kept changing her lines to make her the angry one. She said, ‘If they don’t fix this, I’m calling my agent and then the press.’ She said, ‘I’m not dying here so they can sell more T-shirts.’” Their eyes shine, and they blink hard. “Nora told her to calm down, that she didn’t get how this works, that you can’t just go nuclear and expect to keep your job.”
My hand tightens on the pen. I know that logic too well.
“Were you looking at them?” I ask. “Or just hearing?”
“Both,” they say. “For the first part. Lila was two steps below Nora. Nora’s hand was on the rail. Lila’s hands were moving, all over, like she was trying to grab the scene and reshape it. I kept thinking, ‘Don’t slip, don’t slip.’ The floor was damp. They yelled cut. The director walked away to argue with the DP. People shifted positions. I bent down to answer a text from the second AD.”
They pause. Their throat works.
“Then I heard it,” they say. “This… impact. Not like someone tripping. Like a body hitting metal, hard. The rail rattled. There was a shout, cut off. Then another sound, like… like a sack of laundry dropped down the stairs, all at once.”
The mill’s outline in the window looks sharper now, each broken pane catching a slice of light. My skin prickles.
“What did you see when you looked up?” I ask. My voice is a whisper.
“I saw Lila halfway down the staircase,” they say. “Bent wrong. One leg under her, one arm flung out, head against the rail. Blood on the edge. I saw Nora at the top, hand out like she’d just pushed a door. Her face looked… wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Like she was both the person who did it and the person watching a stranger do it,” they say. “Shock, sure, but also this split second where I knew she recognized the line she’d crossed.”
The air in the café feels heavier, humid from the steamy kitchen and the fog pressing at the windows. A kid near the claw machine squeals with laughter, the sound too bright for the story bleeding across my table.
“Did you see her hands touch Lila?” I ask. My pulse drums in my neck. “Specifically.”
“I saw her grab Lila’s arm during the argument,” they say. “Yank her closer. I saw Lila pull back. When I heard the shove, my eyes were on my phone. I’m not going to lie about that part. When I looked up, the spacing, the way their bodies were… I’d bet my pension there was contact.”
“No one else has put Nora at the top of those stairs,” I say. The words feel heavy. “On the record.”
“Yeah, well.” They wrap their hands around the iced tea glass, ice cubes clinking. “On the record got complicated fast.”
I wait. The fries between us cool, untouched. Grease smell mixes with the bitterness of my coffee and the metallic tang sneaking in every time the door opens.
“What happened next?” I ask.
“Chaos,” they say. “Screaming, people rushing, someone yelling for an ambulance, the medic trying to stabilize Lila’s neck. I hugged the wall, got told to grab towels, then told to get out of the way. I remember my sneakers sliding on the wet steps. I remember thinking, ‘If I fall, they’ll just call it another accident.’”
They press their fingertips to their temples for a second.
“They sent us home after the paramedics took her,” they continue. “Production closed the next day. Then, a week later, they called us into this motel conference room off the highway. Same one the visiting crew always used. Platters of stale donuts, coffee in those big silver urns, curtains that smelled like cigarettes.”
A motel room. I picture Nora in a similar space, signing papers she didn’t read.
“A guy from the network was there,” the PA says. “He never gave us a card. Just said he handled ‘crisis resolution.’ He told us Lila was fine, she’d left the show for creative reasons, and that any statements we made to law enforcement or press needed to be consistent.”
“Consistent with what?” I ask.
“‘She slipped,’” they say. “He handed out scripts, basically. Bullet points. We had to sign that we didn’t witness a push, that we had no knowledge of unsafe conditions, that we agreed not to discuss the incident publicly.”
“NDAs,” I say.
“Sure,” they say. “He called them ‘clarity agreements.’ Said if we stuck to them, the show would go on and our careers wouldn’t suffer. He looked straight at me while he said that last part, like he knew my rent was two months behind.”
I jot down clarity agreements with a hard underline.
“Did you sign?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. The fact that we’re here, whispering in a booth, is answer enough.
“I had a kid on the way,” they say. Their jaw clenches. “My partner had just been told they were shutting down the plant. We needed my insurance. They made it clear that if anyone’s story changed, they’d know. They said there could be legal consequences, breach of contract, defamation, whatever they could throw at us. So yeah. I signed. I walked out of there and I told myself, ‘She slipped.’ Over and over. For years.”
The mill looms beyond the glass, reflected over their shoulder like it’s listening.
“So why now?” I ask softly. “Why risk talking to me?”
They stare at the recorder. The tiny red light blinks back at us.
“Because my kid found ‘River’s Edge High’ clips on some fan channel,” they say. “They asked why the girl in the background disappears halfway through the season. They said there are all these theories, that she got sick, or pregnant, or fired, or dead. They laughed like it was a game. I heard that sound again in my head. The rail. Her body. I couldn’t breathe.”
They drag a hand down their face, rubbing at their eyes.
“Then your podcast drops,” they say. “Threads about the missing girl, about patterns, about ‘accidents.’ You keep saying, ‘If someone out there knows more, call us.’ I kept saying no. Then the stunt girl on Nora’s new show almost died. And I thought, ‘How many times do I let this rerun before I change the channel?’”
My heart slams against my ribs. Jazz is going to shout at me for the metaphor later, but right now all I can think is: this is it. This is the piece that tips speculation into something heavier.
“You know that naming Nora could blow up her life,” I say. “Not just hers—family, coworkers, people whose rent depends on her shows. I’m not saying that to scare you. I need you to understand the scale.”
“You think I haven’t thought about that every day?” they ask, voice sharp. “I watched a teenager bleed on a staircase while adults rearranged the story to keep the cameras rolling. I watched a whole town pretend the mill was just a backdrop, not a crime scene. My life already got blown up. I’m just deciding who I’m done shielding.”
Their anger isn’t loud, but it vibrates through the table, stronger than the trucks rumbling past outside.
“Okay,” I say. My throat feels tight. “Here’s what I can offer. On the podcast, I’ll use an alias for you. I’ll distort your voice so even your own mother wouldn’t recognize it. I won’t mention your current job, or how many kids you have, or anything that could narrow you down. I can also frame this as ‘a former crew member’ without specifying your exact role.”
“And Nora?” they ask.
That’s the question churning in my gut since the first voicemail. I flip my pen between my fingers, feel the cheap plastic ridge dig into my skin.
“Right now, I’m talking about patterns,” I say slowly. “I’m connecting the mill, the missing episodes, the injuries on Second Chances. I haven’t said her name in direct connection with the fall. Not yet.”
“But you will,” they say. “Otherwise this is just spooky campfire content.”
The word content lands heavy. I picture our corkboard back at the loft, red string weaving Nora’s smiling press photos together with grainy stills of Lila, threads tightening around a space where a name sits in invisible ink.
“If I do,” I say, “it’ll be because I have more than one source and corroborating documents. I’m not going to hang everything on you.”
“Good,” they say. “Because I’m already breaking a promise by sitting here.”
We both fall quiet. Outside, a truck with a Silverline Studios logo on the side barrels past, heading toward the highway on-ramp. My stomach flips.
“One more thing,” I say. “You said that fixer never gave you a card. Did you ever hear his name? Even once?”
Their lips press together. They look down at the table, tracing a groove in the wood with one fingertip.
“Hale,” they say finally. “I heard someone call him Hale in the hallway. Might’ve been his first name, might’ve been his last. He talked like a lawyer, not a producer. My friend in accounting said he showed up in invoices as ‘consultant.’ Then one day he didn’t show up at all, and neither did Lila.”
Hale. My mind jumps to Marcus’s glossy photos next to Nora on red carpets, the way he hovers just out of frame in so many promo shots. This could be coincidence. The last name isn’t rare. But the coincidence slots too neatly into the puzzle I’ve been building.
“Thank you,” I say. The words feel frail compared to what they’ve laid out. “For trusting me with this. I know that doesn’t erase what you signed, or what you watched.”
“Trusting you is a calculated risk,” they say. “Same as signing was. I’m just… changing who profits from my silence.”
The recorder’s timer ticks past forty minutes. My notebook is a mess of arrows, underlines, and phrases circled so many times the paper buckles—shove, rail rattled, clarity agreements, Hale.
“If I get a lawyer letter,” they add, grabbing their bag, “I’m deleting all your episodes and telling my kid podcasts are bad for their brain.”
“Fair,” I say. “If that happens, I’ll send you a gift card for an actual therapist.”
Their mouth quirks, the first real shadow of a smile I’ve seen from them. “You better distort my voice good.”
“You’ll sound like a robot in witness protection,” I say. “No one will be able to make you out, but they’ll hear you. That’s the point.”
They nod once, stand, and head for the door, shoulders still hunched, but lighter by a fraction. The bells jangle as they leave, letting in another draft of river-damp air.
I sit there for a long moment, staring at the little red light on my phone.
In my hands, I have the sound of a body hitting metal, translated into words. I have a stranger’s guilt braided with my own excitement and dread. I have a name that brushes against Nora’s life like a match against striking paper.
When I finally hit stop, the recording saves with a bland default title: New audio 016.m4a.
I rename it: voice_from_the_mill_raw and tuck the phone back into my bag, feeling the weight of it anchor me to the cracked vinyl seat.
Out the window, the mill watches the highway, patient and rusting, waiting to see which story I’m going to let walk out into the light—and which one I’m about to push.