I’m still standing in the blue wash of the frozen news segment when the doorbell drills through the house.
The sound is too sharp for the hour, a frantic buzz that vibrates in the glass of the front window. Outside, Maple Hollow is fogged in, the slope of the street disappearing into clouds that catch and smear headlights. The distant freeway hums under the rain, a low, irritated growl.
I drop the remote on the couch and cross the living room. My reflection wobbles in the window—pale, remote in one hand, phone in the other—before the porch light cuts across it. I open the door.
Tessa stands there in wet scrubs and a thin zip-up, hair frizzed from the drizzle, mascara pooled slightly under her eyes. She grips a hospital coffee cup so hard the lid bows.
“You watched it?” she asks, no hello, breath steaming in the cold.
“Come in,” I say.
She steps past me, tracking damp footprints onto the rug. The air shifts with her—antiseptic, sweat, burnt coffee. Behind her, a car crawls up the hill, headlights dragging across my front windows, turning us into silhouettes in someone else’s frame.
She shrugs off her jacket with jerky movements and tosses it over the banister. The fabric hits the wood too hard. Her hands shake when she brings the cup to her mouth.
“I clock out, I get in the car, and my phone blows up with nurses texting, ‘Turn on Channel Seven, dude, isn’t this your sister?’” She laughs once, sharp. “So, yeah. I watched it in the break room. That woman with the helmet hair and the dead doll eyes. Evelyn Hart.”
I close the door, lock it, and for a second I lean my forehead against the cool wood. “They showed Caleb’s curve,” I say. “Blurred, though. So tasteful.”
“Oh, they loved that part.” Tessa walks into the living room, sees the paused screen with Evelyn’s face mid-word, and flinches. “They replayed the clip on someone’s phone. Right over the microwave popcorn.”
She drops onto the couch, then bounces up again like her muscles refuse to let her sit. “You know what they said?” she asks. “In the lounge? While that ticker at the bottom is calling you a fringe panic case without saying your name?”
I sink into the armchair across from her, the cardboard box still open beside me, Caleb’s hoodie slumped over the edge like a person too tired to stand. “Do I want to know?”
“Probably not,” she says. “But I’m telling you anyway.”
She sets the coffee down, hard enough to slosh it. Brown liquid bleeds onto the coaster, spreading into the cork.
“One of the day shift nurses—Becky, the one who decorates every bulletin board like it’s Pinterest—goes, ‘God, can you imagine being that mom? The one on Facebook who keeps posting from the crash site? We had her kid, right?’”
Heat sears my chest. “We had her kid,” I repeat.
“I said, ‘Her name is Mara. She’s my sister. Maybe don’t talk about her like she’s a case file.’” Tessa’s nostrils flare. “Becky goes, ‘Relax, Tess, I’m just saying it’s sad. She’s clearly not coping. Someone needs to cut off her internet.’”
My nails bite my palms. “And you didn’t cut off her oxygen?”
A flicker of a smile twitches at Tessa’s mouth, gone too fast. “Then another nurse—you don’t know her, travel nurse, big lashes, bigger mouth—she goes, ‘Isn’t that the one who thinks the guardrail company murdered her son? People like that freak me out. Give them a Reddit thread and they think they’re Erin Brockovich.’”
I picture them, clustered under fluorescent lights, scrolling, mouths full of gossip and granola.
“I said, ‘She’s not making it up,’” Tessa continues. “I said there are other crashes, and weird reports, and—”
“And?”
She looks at me, eyes bright with rage and something I don’t want to name yet.
“And then they turned on me,” she says. “Becky goes, ‘Well, sure, if family keeps feeding her all that, no wonder she can’t move on. I’d be pissed if my sister kept me stuck like that.’”
My breath snags. The room feels too small, the TV too large, Evelyn’s frozen face taking up more than her share of oxygen.
“They acted like I’m bad at my job.” Tessa’s voice cracks, just once. She swallows it down. “Like I’m violating some nurse code by not sedating you into acceptance.”
Micro-hook: For a wild second I picture them writing a PR statement about me the way Evelyn does, turning me into a liability for their brand of compassion.
I push myself up out of the chair and cross to the TV. I jab the power button. The room exhales into quiet, the only sounds the rain rattling the windows and the low fridge hum.
“I’m sorry they did that,” I say. My voice comes out flatter than I intend. “And I’m sorry that being my sister has turned into a PR risk.”
Tessa barks out a laugh that has no humor in it. “You’re not a PR risk, Mara. You’re a walking case study. ‘What happens when grief meets the internet.’”
I sink onto the couch beside her. The hoodie brushes my thigh, rough with dried detergent.
“They don’t get to talk about you that way,” she says. “I do, because I change your diapers, metaphorically and once literally when you had food poisoning on my couch, but they don’t.”
A thin, startled smile cuts through me. “You called it food poisoning. I called it character building.”
Her shoulders slump a fraction. Then she turns to me fully, tucking one leg under her. Her scrub pants rustle, releasing another wave of hospital: metal, bleach, blood faint under everything.
“Okay,” she says. “Tell me where we actually are right now. Give me the director’s cut. Because I watched that segment, and I know you watched it too, and I’m guessing your brain is doing that thing where it starts building eight revenge fantasy seasons at once.”
I look at her. My throat tightens, and all at once my hands are shaking as hard as hers were at the door.
“You want everything?” I ask. “No edits?”
“Everything,” she says. “Or I stop defending you in break rooms, because I don’t know what I’m defending.”
I grab my phone from the coffee table and swipe to the photo folder. My thumb finds the image without my eyes needing to help: the NDA in Jonah’s neat font, CONFIDENTIAL in the header, language about guardrail terminal performance and settlement terms.
I hand her the phone.
“Start with that,” I say.
She squints at the screen, scrolling slowly. Her lips move on certain phrases. “Guardrail system X-17… documented instances of ‘unanticipated penetration’… sealed settlement… nondisclosure…” Her shoulders stiffen. “Tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”
“Jonah’s firm,” I say. “They negotiated quiet payouts for crashes involving that model. Including dates that line up with some of the anonymous files I got.”
“Jesus.” Her fingers tighten on the phone. “You sure it’s his? His signature?”
“He walked in while I was reading it,” I say. “Tried to spin it as protecting me. Said he was legally bound to keep quiet, but he knew there were ‘concerns.’”
Tessa’s breathing quickens. Her gaze skims the phone like it burns. When she hits the signature block, she swears under her breath.
“He knew,” she whispers. “He knew kids were dying on that hardware.”
“And he still came to the hospital that night, put a hand on your shoulder, and told you it was a tragic accident.” The taste of metal floods my mouth. “He knew the script before Caleb even left the house.”
She sets the phone down like it’s a syringe she doesn’t trust. “Okay,” she says. “That’s one. What else.”
“Liam’s client,” I say.
Her head snaps up. “The woman in the blazer? From the building downtown?”
“Evelyn’s firm,” I say. “I pulled up their site after I followed him. She’s senior counsel for Northwest Infrastructure Safety. She signs press statements, settlement agreements, probably half the talking points in that segment. Liam met her off the record in her tower of glass and stainless steel.”
Tessa presses her fingers into her temples. “You sure it wasn’t a source meeting?” she asks. “Like whistleblower stuff?”
“He said infiltration,” I reply. “He always has a word that makes it sound noble. Meanwhile, he’s on national TV in their b-roll, labeled as the discredited blogger poisoning fragile minds.”
Her eyes dart to the now-black TV, like she can still see his byline there. “So Jonah’s firm is on one side of this, Liam’s paying his rent from the other, and you’re watching from your sagging couch in Maple Hollow with a box of our dead kid’s things.”
“Our kid,” I correct quietly.
She nods, throat jumping.
“Keep going,” she says. “You said everything.”
I tell her about Dr. Navarro and Liam’s connection—how Navarro admitted he once called her to ask about trauma techniques “for a client.” How that knowledge now sits between every EMDR session and my trust in my own brain.
“So he knew the mechanics of memory before he ever moved in,” Tessa says. “Fantastic.”
I tell her about the hidden camera at Old Willow Road, the contractor name that matched Liam’s client list, the anonymous associate from Jonah’s firm warning me away from that same contractor.
As I speak, my words start to feel like marbles spilling out of my mouth, bouncing and colliding on the floor between us. Tessa tracks them with her gaze, but her face tightens more with each new piece.
“You went under the overpass in the middle of the night,” she interrupts at one point. “Again. With a random maintenance guy and a flashlight.”
“With you,” I remind her. “You were there.”
“Right. I was there.” She drags a hand down her face. “I’m making a list of all the things I’d yell at one of my patients for doing.”
“I talked to Detective Ruiz,” I add. “He said the chain-of-custody on the bodycam footage was weird. He wouldn’t say corrupt, but…I heard what he didn’t say.”
Tessa huffs out air. “And in all of this, did you sleep? Eat? Do anything that isn’t drink coffee and argue with dead files?”
A bitter laugh pushes up my throat. “I watched my own scripted interview at Liam’s,” I say. “Practiced the story I’m allowed to tell for when they come after me.”
Her eyes narrow. “He recorded you.”
“With my consent,” I say. “And his questions.”
She stares at me, lips parted. The rain outside sharpens, pinging harder against the windowpane, making the glass vibrate faintly. A car passes at the bottom of the hill, headlights casting a bright smear across our faces then sliding away.
Micro-hook: In that pale flash, I realize I’ve built a murder board in my head with every string tied directly to me.
“Okay,” Tessa says at last. “Okay. I get why you’re wound up. I get why watching that segment made you want to set the studio on fire.”
I nod, waiting for the but.
“But I’m at my limit, Mara.”
There it is.
She picks up the coffee again and then sets it down untouched. Her leg starts bouncing, heel thumping the rug.
“I walk into work and people are gossiping about you, and by extension me,” she says. “They’re wondering when the crazy will spread. They’re asking if I enable you. And I don’t care what Becky thinks, but I care about my job. I care about my license. I care about not turning into Aunt Elena.”
The name lands like a slap. “I’m not—”
“I know,” she cuts in. “I know you’re not psychotic. Right now. I know you’re grieving and smart and obsessive in a way that would probably win Pulitzers if it weren’t pointed at our lives. But there’s a line between investigating and self-destructing, and you keep sprinting toward it.”
I stare at her. My fingers find a loose string on the couch cushion and twist it until it bites.
“So what,” I ask quietly. “You want me to stop? Let Evelyn tell the world I’m a fragile idiot who can’t tell my own memories from a Reddit thread?”
“I want you to have a plan,” Tessa says. “Not just…impulses. Following strange men downtown. Sneaking into Jonah’s office. Nighttime stakeouts under overpasses. You’re one accident away from proving them right about you.”
Anger flares hot. “They killed my kid,” I say. “Or helped. Or covered up for the people who did. I don’t get to be reasonable about that.”
“You do,” she says, softer now. “Because if you’re not, they win twice. They kill him and they take you.”
The room goes quiet again except for the rain and the faint buzz of my fridge. My throat burns. I look at her and see the girl who stood next to me at Caleb’s casket, nails digging crescents into my hand to keep me from collapsing.
“So what are you saying,” I ask. “Exactly.”
She takes a breath like she’s about to insert a chest tube. “I’m saying I’m in,” she says. “But on conditions.”
I blink. “Conditions.”
“Number one,” she holds up a finger, “no more solo stunts. You don’t go anywhere alone for this. Not the crash site, not mystery office buildings, not ‘I just wanted to drive the route once more’ at midnight. You loop someone in—me, Ruiz, Dr. Navarro, I don’t care. Somebody knows where you are and why.”
My mouth opens, then shuts.
“Number two,” another finger, “you talk to Navarro before you do any more self-induced trance bullshit. You tell her about Liam calling her. You bring her into this instead of treating therapy like a spy tool.”
“She might shut me down,” I say.
“Or she might keep you from flipping your brain inside out for Evelyn’s PR team to point at on TV.”
I stare at my hands, the small half-moons from my own nails. “And if I don’t?” I ask. “If I decide I don’t need a chaperone to live my life?”
Tessa’s jaw tightens. Her eyes shine, and she blinks hard.
“Then I call Navarro myself,” she says. “And Jonah. I tell them what you’re doing. I ask them to intervene. Up to and including…” She trails off, swallows. “Up to and including an involuntary hold if you’re putting yourself in danger.”
The word hangman noose doesn’t need to appear. It hovers in the space between us anyway.
“You’d do that,” I say. My voice scrapes the bottom of my chest. “To me.”
“I would,” she says. “Because I’d rather you hate me and live than love me on the way off a cliff.”
Tears prick the back of my eyes. I swallow them, hard.
“So my choice is what?” I ask. “Be reasonable, or be restrained?”
“Your choice is to let me help you without watching you self-destruct,” she replies. Her hand lands on my knee, fingers trembling. “I can’t keep being the sister who covers for you no matter what. I did that with Caleb. I will regret it until I die.”
The admission cracks something inside her; I see it in the way her shoulders fold in, in the glassiness of her stare. The night he left the party, the texts they hid from me—they press in at the edges, but she shuts the door on them fast.
“You’re not the only one whose story is getting rewritten,” she says, voice low. “Mine is too. I need to be able to live with the new version.”
Silence settles, heavy and full. Outside, the cul-de-sac glows faintly through the fog—neighbor windows lit, blinds drawn to just the right HOA-approved angle. Somewhere, a phone chimes with another memorial hashtag. Inside my house, our words hang between us like smoke.
My phone buzzes on the table, screen lighting up my thigh. I glance down.
A text from Liam: Saw the segment. We need to get ahead of this. Come by tomorrow? I can walk you through how they’ll attack your story. Mock depo style.
My lungs tighten. The word depo jumps out at me like a neon sign over a courtroom.
Tessa squeezes my knee once more, then pulls her hand back. “So,” she says. “What’s it going to be, big sister? Plan with guardrails”—her mouth twists on the word—“or spiral until they drag you out behind glass doors where I can’t get to you?”
I stare at Liam’s message, at the promise of strategy wrapped in his usual control, and then at Tessa’s tired, furious face.
I feel caught between two versions of myself: the one who grabs the wheel and the one who lets someone else script the crash report.
I don’t answer her. Not yet.
The phone buzzes again in my palm, insistent, and for the first time I wonder which guardrail I’m about to drive straight through—the one the company built, or the one my sister is frantically trying to raise around me.