I pick the coffee shop with the most glass.
Floor-to-ceiling windows face the strip mall parking lot, and headlights smear across the glass every few seconds when a car pulls out onto the sloping road. It’s late afternoon and the sky hangs low and heavy, the kind of gray that makes Maple Hollow feel like the inside of a Tupperware bowl. Inside, the air smells like espresso, sugar, and wet jacket sleeves.
The kid is already there when I walk in, hunched in a corner booth, scrolling his phone in jittery bursts. Hoodie, shaggy hair, the lingering outline of acne along his jaw. A paper cup sits untouched in front of him, lid still on.
I order two more drinks anyway. A bribe works better in triplicate.
“Logan?” I say when I reach the booth.
He glances up and then down again so fast I almost miss the flinch. “Yeah. Hi. Ms. Ell— Mara.”
“Call me Mara,” I say. I set the tray down and nudge one of the cups toward him. “Hazelnut latte. Tessa said it’s your favorite.”
“She narked on me?” The corner of his mouth twitches. He peels back the lid, letting steam curl up between us.
“She bribed you with my money,” I say. “Technically this is your hazard pay.”
Micro-hook: He snorts, and for a second I see the kid he must have been before funerals and memorial hashtags and adult eyes on his Snapchat.
I slide into the seat across from him. The vinyl sticks to the back of my thighs through my jeans. The overhead fixtures buzz with the same high whine as Liam’s office lights, but the coffee shop hum softens it—milk steamers, grinders, that mechanical chime of phone alerts every few seconds.
I put my notebook on the table. Beside it, I lay my phone, screen up.
“Before we start, I want to say this,” I tell him. “I don’t use your last name. I don’t show your face to anyone. If anyone hears your voice, it’s with your permission or through a lawyer who’s on my side. You can walk out whenever you want. Does that work?”
He chews on the cardboard sleeve of his cup, eyes flicking to my phone. “You’re gonna record?”
“Only if you let me,” I say. “So I don’t mess up what you say. You’ve seen what happens on TV when people twist teen quotes, right?”
He grimaces.
“You have my word,” I add. “And I know my word is worth about as much as one of those HOA cover letters, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“Nah, your word’s like… Oprah-level,” he mutters. “My mom reads your books.”
That lands in a strange place. I push the feeling aside.
“Okay,” he says. “Record. Just— no real names. For anyone. Not just mine.”
I hit the red circle. The app chimes and the timer starts to climb.
“We can make up names if you want,” I say. “Whoever you talk about, we can call them… Alpha, Beta, whatever.”
“That’s weird,” he says. “Let’s just say ‘this other guy’ and hope the FBI never calls me.”
“I’m not the FBI,” I say. “I’m just the mom.”
He looks at me then, really looks, and drops his gaze again. His knee bounces under the table. The ice in my own drink clacks against the plastic.
“Tell me about the party,” I say.
“It was at Haley’s cousin’s house,” he says. “Out by the reservoir, but like, technically still within the city line so the cops care more. Her parents were out. People brought their own stuff. Usual.”
“Stuff meaning—”
“Beer, cheap vodka, that hard seltzer crap,” he says. He shrugs deeper into his hoodie. “Some people were high, but not, like, fentanyl or anything. Weed, maybe pills.”
“Caleb?”
His name makes Logan flinch again. He picks at a hangnail until it breaks.
“He pregamed,” he says. “Showed up loud. Like, funny loud, not fighty. You know?”
I remember Caleb at twelve, looping bad puns at the dinner table. I nod.
“He did shots with this other guy,” Logan says. “They mixed them with black cherry soda in that gross plastic tub. You probably don’t want details.”
“I want exactly that,” I say. My pen scratches across the page. “How long between his first drink and when he left?”
“Like…” Logan squints at the light fixture over our table. “He got there at ten? Maybe? He left around one?”
“Three hours,” I say. “Was anyone trying to stop him from driving?”
“Tessa,” he says promptly. “She kept taking his cup. Then someone handed him another one. People were doing the thing where they pretend to pour water but it’s not? You know?”
My grip tightens on the pen.
“And by the end?” I ask. “How drunk did he look, on a scale where one is ‘fine’ and ten is ‘can’t walk’?”
Logan stares into his latte, voice dropping. “Nine.”
The word hits like a slap.
“Nine?” I repeat.
“He was leaning on people,” Logan says. “He missed a step on the stairs and had to grab the railing. I remember because someone yelled ‘guardrail!’ and it was, like, a joke, and now it’s not a joke, and I kind of want to puke onto this table.”
The room tilts a fraction. I write stair joke in the margin so hard my pen digs grooves in the paper.
“Did you tell the police that?” I ask.
“No,” he says quickly. “My mom told me to say I left early. Which I did. Eventually.”
We sit in the steamed-up alcove of our booth, surrounded by glass and reflections. In the window, I watch my hand move across the page from three angles—tabletop, glass, phone screen.
“Anything else about when he left?” I ask. “Who he left with, how he looked?”
“He left alone,” Logan says. “I watched him go down the driveway and trip over the curb. He laughed. Everyone did. He yelled back, like, ‘I’m good, I’m good.’”
The words ring too close to the texts I found. I’m good to drive, promise.
“I thought he was just drunk,” Logan adds. “I thought he’d done this a million times.”
He presses the heel of his hand to one eye, roughly, like he’s trying to erase an image. I want to do the same.
I talk to the second kid on the high school bleachers.
The stadium sits at the bottom of a hill, a bowl that catches cold air and echoes. The chain-link fence throws a grid of shadow over the rubber track. Pine needles litter the steps. From here I can see the tops of Maple Hollow’s houses climbing the opposite slope, windows flashing with sunset glare. The freeway hum is a constant undercurrent.
Priya swings one foot nervously, sneaker toe tracing the word WOLVES someone carved into the metal bench. Her dark hair is braided down her back; her nose ring flashes when she tips her head.
“I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” she says. “My mom thinks grief is contagious.”
“Your mom and mine would get along,” I say. I sit a step below her, giving her higher ground. My phone rests between us, recording, screen dimmed. “You can use a fake name when you tell this story in therapy later.”
She snorts. “Hard pass on therapy.”
“Then consider this exposure practice,” I say. “You were at Haley’s cousin’s, right?”
“Yeah.” She wraps her arms around her knees. “He was, like, my responsibility that night. Caleb.”
That’s new. I straighten. “How?”
“We planned it,” she says. “He texted me that afternoon. Said he’d promised you he’d be careful and he needed a witness so you’d believe him next time. I don’t know. It was his thing.”
The wind pushes a cold breath across the field. I tuck my hands under my thighs.
“So you watched his intake,” I say.
“He started hard,” she says. “But then he stopped. I cut him off around eleven. He sat with me in the kitchen for, like, an hour, just drinking water and talking about music. We argued about crappy remixes. He was annoying and normal.”
“How did he look around one?” I ask. “When he left.”
“Fine,” she says instantly. “Normal fine. Not nine. Whatever nine means. He wasn’t slurring. He walked straight. I did the little ‘follow my finger’ thing I learned from TikTok.”
“He tripped over the curb,” I say.
“He always tripped over curbs,” she fires back. “He wore stupid shoes. That’s not science.”
My notebook fills with arrows: Logan: nine, leaning. Priya: water, steady. The pages start to look like a conspiracy wall even before I add red string.
“Did he argue with anyone before he left?” I ask. “Go outside with someone?”
She chews the inside of her cheek. “We argued,” she says finally. “But not about driving. He was texting somebody and wouldn’t show me. That’s it.”
“Somebody who upset him?”
“He looked… keyed up,” she says. “Not in a drunk way. Like he’d been waiting all night to talk to whoever it was.”
“Did he say a name?”
“No,” she says. “He just said, ‘After tonight, I’m telling her.’ I figured he meant you.”
My throat tightens. The playlist. For When I Tell Her.
“When he left,” I ask, “did anyone offer him a ride?”
“I did,” she says. “He said, ‘I’ve got it.’ He hugged me, told me I was his favorite sober narc. Then he went out front.”
“You watched him get in his car?”
“Yeah,” she says. “He walked fine. I swear. He leaned against the car for a sec, staring down the road. That’s why I remember. It looked like he was waiting for… I don’t know. Something.”
“For what?”
“I told myself it was for you,” she says. “Like you might show up and catch him. I know how you are.”
That lands sideways. I deserve it.
“He got in,” she continues. “Lights on. He pulled away slow. No swerving. If he crashed because of drinking, it wasn’t from how he left my sight. I will die on that hill.”
Micro-hook: Two hills now—Logan’s guardrail joke stairs and Priya’s sober exit—rising on either side of my brain, and in the valley between them, my son’s car wraps itself around metal in every version.
The third kid meets me behind the grocery store.
The loading dock smells like wet cardboard and fryer oil from the chain restaurant next door. A cluster of shopping carts rattles faintly in the wind. Above us, the sky has shifted from gray to black; the parking lot lights cast cones of dull orange on the asphalt. Distant headlights smear across the front windows of the strip mall.
“You’re not, like, wired or anything, right?” he asks. He’s thinner than the other two, taller, with a mop of curls tucked under a beanie. Name tag on his apron: RYAN. Hands shoved in his pockets.
“If I were wired, I’d be way more awkward,” I say. “Promise. Just the phone.”
I hold it up. The red timer blinks. My notebook feels heavier than it should in my other hand, pages curled from damp fingers.
“I didn’t know Caleb,” Ryan says. “I just know cars. I was delivering pizzas that night.”
“Haley’s cousin’s house?” I ask.
“Down the road,” he says. “Big brown two-story with Christmas lights still up in February. The party house was a few doors down. I never went in. I hate parties. I get paid to bring the food, not stay and pretend I’m cool.”
I believe him; his eyes keep darting toward the dumpsters, like he expects someone to jump out and laugh at him.
“So what do you remember?” I ask.
“Three orders that neighborhood,” he says. “One at ten. One at eleven. One at twelve-thirty. On the last one, there was this car.”
My fingers tighten on the pen. “What car?”
“Dark sedan,” he says. “Nothing flashy. Like a Camry or something newer. Parked halfway down the block from the party, in the shadow between two streetlights. No stickers, no dents. Too clean.”
“How do you know it wasn’t just a neighbor?” I ask.
“Because neighbors don’t sit there for an hour with their lights off,” he says. “I did two runs out of that cul-de-sac. Same car. Same spot. Engine on. I could hear it when I walked by. Just… idling.”
The back of my neck prickles.
“Did you see who was inside?” I ask.
“Kinda,” he says. “On the second run, right before one, the driver’s side window was down a crack. Guy’s older. Not, like, grandpa, but older than you.”
“Thanks,” I mutter.
He huffs a laugh. “He had his seat low and back,” he says. “Baseball cap. Facial hair. He was watching the house. Not scrolling his phone, not singing along to the radio. Just… watching.”
The word lands heavy. I picture Liam in his car across the street from my house, engine off, watching my lit windows. Then I shove that picture hard into a mental drawer and slam it.
“Did you think about calling anyone?” I ask.
“And say what?” he shoots back. “‘Hi, there’s a guy creeping near some drunk kids’? They’d tell me to mind my own. Plus, I was on the clock.”
His honesty burns.
“What about when Caleb left?” I say. “Did you see his car?”
“Was his the silver hatchback?” he asks. “With the stupid band sticker?”
The stupid band sticker. The one we’d argued about because it left residue.
“Yes,” I say.
“Then yeah,” he says. “I saw it back out of the driveway right after I dropped off the last pizzas. He had his window down. Someone yelled ‘text me’ and he flashed them his phone.”
“How was his driving?” My voice thins.
“He took the corner kind of fast,” Ryan says. “But he stayed in his lane. The sedan pulled out a few seconds after. Not right on his bumper, but not far either.”
My pen stops moving.
“You’re sure?” I ask. “Same car, same driver?”
“Same car, yeah,” he says. “Couldn’t see the guy that time. Headlights were on. He turned them on right before he moved.”
“So the sedan followed him.”
“I mean, technically we were all going the same direction,” he says. “Me too. I turned left back toward town, and they kept going straight toward the reservoir. I figured the older dude was some parent checking on the party. People do that here. They sit in their SUVs and pretend they’re Uber.”
“You didn’t tell the cops,” I say.
“I told my manager,” he says. “He said, ‘Do you want to spend your weekend in court?’ So no.”
Micro-hook: The word sedan sits on the page next to guardrail and Camry? and the page starts to look like a crime scene more than a notebook.
I leave him by the loading dock and walk to my car.
The night wraps around the parking lot, dense and wet. Rain spatters my face in fine cold dots. A line of headlights snakes down the slope of Maple Hollow, smearing white across the grocery store windows. Cars glide past memorial lawn signs and regulation-height grass, everyone performing normal while rumors fester behind glass.
In my front seat, I spread the notebook open on the steering wheel.
Logan: “Nine.” Leaning. Curb joke. Tessa took his cup.
Priya: Water. Kitchen. Sober check. “He walked fine.” Texting someone. “After tonight, I’m telling her.”
Ryan: Dark sedan. Older man. Engine idling. Followed Caleb’s car toward the reservoir.
Three different nights inside the same night. Three lenses pointed at my son, each framing a slightly different boy. Wasted, steady, watched.
I scroll through my recordings. The waveform spikes and dips: Logan’s shaky laugh, Priya’s stubborn insistence, Ryan’s clipped certainty. Each voice tells a story that makes sense from the angle it was recorded. Together they sound like an argument I can’t referee.
If I lean in too hard on Logan’s version, I turn Caleb into the reckless drunk who proved the company right. If I cling to Priya’s, I erase the ways he scared people that night. If I fixate on Ryan’s sedan, I risk turning every middle-aged man in a dark car into a villain I need.
And somewhere in the middle is a real person who existed for seventeen years before any of these kids poured cherry vodka into plastic tubs.
My phone buzzes with a notification from the neighborhood Facebook group—another memorial post tagged #angelversary, some other parent curating their grief into a collage under good lighting. I close the app before I can read the comments.
In my windshield, I see my own faint reflection layered over the parking lot: my eyes, the rows of cars, the neon OPEN sign, the shine of wet asphalt. Glass turning everything into double exposures.
“Who were you?” I whisper to the empty passenger seat. “And who was watching you leave?”
No answer, of course. Just rain, pine, distant freeway hum.
I turn the key and grip the wheel, notebook open beside me, recordings burning quietly on my phone.
I’m holding three conflicting stories and one new dread: that while kids were arguing about curbs and playlists, an adult sat in a dark car down the road, studying my son’s taillights like a target.
I pull out of the lot and head toward home, mind already moving ahead to the next piece I’ll need to chase this ghost sedan—footage, plate numbers, anything—trying not to picture which older man I know who owns a dark, forgettable car and lies for a living.