The news anchor’s teeth are too white for the words leaving her mouth.
“—in coordination with the Attorney General’s office, state prosecutors have reached plea agreements with several individuals connected to the Old Willow Road guardrail failures,” she says, voice smooth over the low hum of the dishwasher and the distant freeway outside my window.
The camera cuts to a live feed: a podium in front of a gray state seal, microphones clustered like metal flowers. I pull the throw blanket tighter around my shoulders and sink deeper into the couch. The fabric smells faintly of detergent and Tessa’s citrus lotion.
“Here we go,” Tessa murmurs from the armchair, tucking her feet under her scrubs. Her badge still clips to her pocket, a tiny rectangle of authority dangling from a day spent handing people pills and bad news.
Ruiz steps up to the podium, suit darker than the backdrop, expression carved down to essentials. I can hear the slight rasp in his voice even through the TV speakers.
“Today’s charges reflect weeks of review following the preliminary hearing,” he says. “The subcontractor driver, Michael Grady, has agreed to plead guilty to criminally negligent homicide and failure to remain at the scene of an accident in connection with the crash that killed Caleb Ellison.”
My last name lands in the room like dropped cutlery.
Tessa’s eyes flick to me. I keep my gaze on the screen, nails scratching the ridge of the remote.
“In exchange for full cooperation and testimony against higher-level decision-makers,” Ruiz continues, “Mr. Grady will receive a reduced sentence, subject to the court’s approval.”
The anchor voice cuts in over B-roll of crash diagrams and stock footage of highways.
“Sources tell us the driver faces between three and seven years, depending on the judge,” she says cheerfully. “The plea comes with strict conditions, including a permanent commercial driving ban.”
Three to seven years. For tailing my son, for hitting us, for leaving him wrapped around a defective rail on a dark curve while he drove away.
My jaw clenches until my teeth ache.
“There’s more,” Tessa says quietly.
The broadcast slides to a montage of executives walking briskly into buildings, their faces half-hidden by sunglasses and file folders.
“Several mid-level executives from Hart’s subsidiary divisions have entered pleas as well,” the anchor continues. “The charges include falsifying safety reports and obstruction of regulatory inquiry. In a statement, Hart Safety Solutions announced the creation of a fifty-million-dollar remediation fund to replace certain guardrail units and support ‘affected families,’ while maintaining that their products remain, quote, safe when properly installed.”
A polished spokesperson appears on the screen, standing in front of a render of a bright, intact guardrail. Her tone carries the same threadbare sympathy I’ve heard for months, rebranded today as triumph of accountability.
“We are deeply committed to safety,” she says. “While we disagree with certain characterizations, we recognize the need to restore public trust. This fund represents our ongoing partnership with communities.”
I mute the TV. Her mouth keeps moving silently, teeth flashing inside a rectangle of glass.
Tessa exhales through her nose. “Well,” she says. “That’s… something.”
The mechanical chime of a phone alert punctures the quiet. My own screen lights up on the coffee table: group texts, news apps, a Maple Hollow Facebook thread already mutating into hot takes. Parents posting crying emojis, neighbors debating whether the fund makes the roads safe again, someone asking if this means property values might bounce back.
“Three to seven years,” I say. “For leaving my kid on the road like he was roadkill.”
Tessa reaches for the remote and clicks the volume back up in time to catch the tail end of a reporter’s question.
“Does this represent full justice for the families?” a disembodied voice calls from off-camera.
Ruiz pauses, eyes in that middle distance public servants learn to fixate on.
“No legal outcome will ever feel like enough to a parent who’s lost a child,” he says. “Our job is to pursue accountability within the system we have.”
The station cuts back to the anchor, who pivots to weather. Rain icons march across a map like tiny storms deployed on schedule.
I turn the TV off. The screen goes black and becomes a mirror: my face, Tessa’s, the outline of the room. Two women floating in reflected darkness over a faint ghost of Ruiz at the podium.
“Do you want coffee or whiskey?” Tessa asks.
“Both.”
“Coward’s choice,” she says. “I’ll make coffee.”
She pushes up from the chair and heads to the kitchen, socked feet whispering across the wood floor. I stay on the couch, watching the blank screen until the smell of brewing beans slowly muscles past the chemical lemon of floor cleaner.
When she returns with two mugs, I wrap my hands around the heat. The ceramic warms my skin, anchors me in the room.
“Talk to me,” she says. “Or insult the prosecutor’s tie. Something.”
“What am I supposed to say?” I stare into the coffee, watching the surface quiver with tiny ripples. “We asked for charges. We got charges. We asked for them to admit patterns. They half-admitted patterns. There’s a fund, reports, jail time on the table. On paper it’s a good day.”
“But?” she prompts.
“But my son is still dead,” I say. “And the people who approved the design, who picked the cheaper end-terminal, who drafted the ‘narrative management’ slides, are issuing ‘no admission of liability’ while their stock dips for a week and then recovers. They’ll talk about this at conferences like a case study in crisis control.”
Tessa blows on her coffee, steam curling up between us. “No sentence ever matches what was taken,” she says. “I see it every time there’s a trial after a bad ER night. Families think ten years or twenty years or death will flip a switch. It never does.”
“So what’s the point?” I ask. “Why sit in that room, tear myself open, drag Jonah and Liam and Dana into the light, if the ending was always a discount plea and a corporate fund?”
She leans back, eyes on the ceiling. “The point is less dead people,” she says. “Those rails get replaced, those documents get released, those execs lose their jobs and their ability to keep doing it. The next Sofia or Caleb hits something that bends the right way.”
The name catches in my lungs. Sofia. The nurse whose parents looked me in the eye at the hearing and said we were changing the words.
I sip the coffee. It scalds my tongue, sharp and bitter.
“Does that feel like enough to you?” I ask.
Tessa’s fingers drum against the mug. “Honestly?” She shrugs. “No. I want somebody to sit in a cell and stare at a wall for the rest of their life thinking about your kid. But I also know that revenge doesn’t rewind anything. All it does is burn whatever’s left.”
She glances toward the window, where afternoon fog presses against the glass, softening the view of Maple Hollow’s neat lawns and decorative mailboxes. A car’s headlights smear across the pane as it glides past, briefly turning our reflections into ghost versions of ourselves.
“So now what?” she asks. “If this is the legal ending we get, what’s your ending?”
The question lands like a stone in my stomach. I don’t have an answer yet. Just fragments, vengeful drafts, therapeutic exercises turned chapters.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But apparently I’m the one who writes it.”
The letter arrives two days later, thick paper in a plain white envelope with my name typed alongside Jonah’s.
I open it at the dining table, under the same overhead light that has watched me outline conspiracies and late bills and blog posts. The paper feels heavy, almost textured, under my thumbs.
“Well,” I say.
Tessa looks up from her phone, where a hospital group chat is buzzing about flu season. “Legal doom?” she asks.
“Professional sanctions,” I say, scanning. “Public reprimand. One-year suspension of practice with eligibility to reapply. Mandatory ethics training. Loss of partnership. Conditions for future client disclosure.”
The words on the page bend slightly when my grip tightens.
My phone buzzes before I can process more. Jonah’s name lights the screen.
“Speak of the devil,” Tessa mutters.
I answer and put it on speaker.
“You got it?” Jonah asks, without greeting.
“I did,” I say. “We’re reading it now.”
I can hear city noise on his end: a bus braking, a distant siren, someone yelling at somebody else about parking. Glass doors hiss open and shut in the background.
“So that’s that,” he says. “I’m radioactive. The firm’s officially cut me loose. They advised me to ‘take this time to reflect’ and also to not sue them.”
“Are you going to?” I ask.
He laughs once, humorless. “Sue them? With what money? With what reputation? No. I’m going to pack up the diplomas and the model buildings and figure out who I am without a logo behind my name.”
Tessa raises an eyebrow at me and mouths, Good.
I trace a line in the letter where the board “acknowledges the mitigating factor of whistleblower cooperation.” Jonah’s own quiet plea deal with the system.
“You could start over,” I say. “Different kind of practice. Smaller. Choose clients who actually… need defending.”
“You sound like Dana,” he says. “She keeps sending me articles about boutique plaintiff firms. ‘Ellison & Cho, guardians of the little guy.’”
I picture the two of them in some cramped office, stacks of real files instead of glossy pitch decks, chasing the kind of justice that doesn’t fit cleanly into billable hours.
“That doesn’t sound terrible,” I say.
Silence hangs on the line for a moment, full of all the things we’ve never fixed between us.
“Would that make any of this right?” he asks quietly. “For Caleb?”
I look at the letter, at the words “misconduct” and “duty” sitting side by side.
“No,” I say. “But it might stop the next version of you from helping bury the next version of him.”
On the other end, I hear him exhale, a long breath like a tire losing air.
“I’ll take that,” he says. “For now.”
After we hang up, Tessa taps the envelope with her fingernail.
“Partial justice,” she says. “Not very cinematic.”
“Maybe the cinematic version broke our lives in the first place,” I reply.
She studies me for a beat, then nods. “You going to call Liam?” she asks.
My chest tightens. I haven’t seen him in person since the hearing, only glimpsed him through glass—his blinds half-down, his porch light off earlier than usual, the blue glow of his screens gone more nights than not.
“Probably not,” I say. “But I’m going to walk outside.”
The air on the porch smells like wet pine and distant exhaust. A fine mist hangs over Maple Hollow, making the streetlights bleed into pale halos.
Across the cul-de-sac, Liam’s house looks different without the usual cluster of monitors flickering in the front room. Only a single lamp glows in what used to be his office, warm yellow instead of cool LED blue. His car sits in the driveway, beads of water glinting on the windshield.
My phone buzzes again. A text from him this time, like he felt me looking.
Clients bailed, the message reads. “Brand risk.” Might finally meet my sleep quota.
I huff a breath that’s not fully a laugh. My thumbs hover over the keyboard.
What did you expect? I type. You made yourself the villain in their story on live TV.
The dots appear, disappear, return.
Better villain than ghost, he replies. At least villains get named.
I glance at his dark windows, imagining him inside amid half-packed boxes, contracts canceled, NDAs losing their teeth now that he’s torched his usefulness. The man who built a career on curated information is becoming a cautionary tale in corporate Slack channels.
Another text blinks through.
Been thinking about writing again, he says. Something I don’t have to redact for anyone. Terrible idea?
I lean against the porch railing. The wood is damp under my palms. Somewhere down the slope, teenagers shout near the reservoir, their voices thin in the fog. A car crawls up the street, headlights smearing across my windows, across his, turning both houses into quicksilver shapes.
I type carefully.
Not terrible, I write. Just dangerous. Stories always are.
His reply comes slower this time.
You would know, he says.
Out of habit, my gaze lifts to the security camera above my door—the little glass eye that has watched me sleepwalk through the past year. Its red status light blinks, recording this quiet, nothing moment with the same impartial attention it gave the night somebody rearranged my life.
I pocket my phone and go back inside.
At the dining table, my laptop waits, lid closed, screen dark. I open it. The hinge creaks in a way it didn’t before all this, a tiny, aging protest. The display blooms to life, reflecting my face for a heartbeat before settling into the cluttered desktop: draft chapters, legal PDFs, photos, the essay that started the smear campaign, a folder labeled CAL crash final that is anything but.
I create a new document.
TITLE, the cursor prompts. The blinking bar feels like a question mark.
Outside, the phone on the coffee table chimes again—another notification, another headline about plea deals and “moving forward.” In our neighborhood group, I know parents are already crafting angelversary posts with news links attached, polishing our dead kids into teachable moments and hashtags.
I stare at the empty page.
The law has written its version. The company has written theirs. Liam is talking about writing his. Jonah and Dana might someday, in motions and briefs and cautious op-eds.
I rest my fingers on the keys, not yet pressing down, and wonder which parts of the story I’m willing to fix in ink—and which parts I’m still afraid to remember clearly at all.