A new email slides into view. From: Jessa Wyatt.
Subject: Call Confirmation + Board Chair Note. I open it.
Dear Ms. Hale,
Appreciate your prompt acceptance. Our Board Chair’s office asked me to share the following: the Chair plans to highlight several grantees at an upcoming luncheon with community partners. We would be honored to list “Witness” among those grantees, pending your approval of language. This would not be a press release, merely remarks at a private event. Please advise.
Best,
Jessa
Private events are never private for long. I type:Thank you for the heads up. Please send any proposed language to my gallery for approval before use in any context, public or private.I add:For clarity, we prefer “Karael supports ‘Witness’” to “Karael partners with ‘Witness.’” There’s a difference. Thank you.
I CC Zoe again. Her reply is a single word:Yessss.Then:I’m putting a line in our contracts about phrasing. You’re right.
It’s not that I think Karael is a villain. Institutions aren’t people; they’re systems with multiple hands. I’m not against hands. I just need to know which ones are holding the work and which ones are holding the cameras.
The afternoon leans harder through the windows. The light goes warm and then orange on the bricks across the alley. The start-up people begin to file out in clusters, talking about runway and burn and a number they need to hit before they sleep. The sculptor down the hall curses at another piece of metal and then laughs like he meant to do it. The building’s stairwell fills with the smell of someone’s takeout. I close my windows an inch to keep it out.
I turn back to the canvas to finish what I can. .
When the paint needs to sit again, I set the brush down and pull my stool to the laptop. I open my website and check that the contact form feeds to the right inbox. I add a line to the show page: “If you are a survivor seeking resources, please see the following list,” and link the domestic violence hotline and the counseling center three blocks from the gallery. I don’t want to be the person people write in crisis. I want them to find people who trained for that work. My work is a threshold, not the room.
The phone vibrates with a new text from an unknown number. It’s a New York area code. I brace for someone fishing for a quote or trying to sell me framing services I don’t need. Instead, the text reads:Ms. Hale, this is Jessa’s assistant at Karael. Confirming tomorrow’s call at 10:30 and requesting a mailing address in case materials are needed. Thank you.
I send the gallery’s address and add:Please do not mail any materials to my studio. It seems fussy.
Another email arrives, this one from the Ledger’s features editor, pulling my quote into a blurb that reads clean. I approve it. The item goes live with a headline my curator will like, and I will not read twice because compliments make me itch when they’re written in a tone that sounds like a weather report.
I wash my hands in the sink. I think of twelve-year-old me, hiding brushes under a sweater like contraband and whispering promises into a room that smelled like bleach and quiet.
Before I shut the laptop, a final notification rolls in: Karael Foundation—Call Confirmation. It includes a line at the bottom in small text:Our Board Chair may join briefly at the beginning to welcome you. Please plan for an additional five minutes.I read it twice and then close the computer like I’m pressing a lid on boiling water. It doesn’t change anything.
I walk the studio and check what needs to be checked before I stop for the day.
On the worktable, the phone buzzes once, a softer sound than the bomb it was all morning. I flip it over and don’t read the screen. I don’t need another voice in my head tonight. The canvases take up space against the brick like patient bodies waiting to sit up. The studio is a box of air balanced on a few words I can say out loud to make the outlines solid.
“I will not be re-written,” I say to the room. It doesn’t need to echo. It needs to exist. The words sit in the air and then settle where they belong.
The phone buzzes again. I leave it face down.
Chapter 2 – Cassian
I close the intake file and let the screen go back to my dashboard. The boy’s name is redacted down to initials—K.D. He’s fifteen, still trying to grow into a body that learned to run before it learned to rest. We pulled him out of a basement apartment three nights ago with a local task force that wanted a press conference more than they wanted a plan. He didn’t make a statement. He didn’t need to. The burns on his shoulders told the story no one wanted to read.
“Aftercare—K.D.,” I dictate into the encrypted note field, my voice low in the quiet room. “Meds: taper clonidine over ten days; hydroxyzine as needed for sleep; no benzodiazepines. Therapy: Nadia on Tuesdays, McKinnon on Fridays; both to coordinate with pediatric trauma team at the hospital. Safety: two-step access; do not share room assignments with volunteers. Education: on-site tutor; no in-person classes for two weeks. Press: zero contact. If a camera shows up, call me.”
I stop the recording. The software converts speech to text, scrubs the audio, and saves the file to a server only a handful of people can touch. I read the text and lock the chart. The boy will live. That is not the same as saying he’s safe.
The room around me is cleaner than most hospital wards I’ve worked in. White walls and soft ocean light reflect off them as dusk tries to make itself comfortable. The windows are old wood, thicker than they look, with the kind of wavy glass you only notice when the horizon bends. The building is a Ward Foundation research wing on paper: grants, conferences, and a lecture series with clever posters. In practice, it’s a safe house. We call them Sanctuaries when reporters come around because it photographs better than “places where people hide.”
The upstairs room I turned into my office used to be a bedroom. I left the bones and stripped the rest. Monitors stackin a bookcase so a casual glance reads “books.” Cables run down the back along a spine we hid in the drywall when we renovated. A Persian rug keeps the floor from feeling like a lab. I kicked off my shoes when I came in. Bare feet read threat or comfort depending on the man and the mood. For me, it’s accuracy. You work more honestly when you can read the ground.
On the desk is an encrypted laptop, two thumb drives in a small metal case, a cut-glass tumbler with a finger of water I haven’t touched, and a medical kit open like a staged photograph.
A notification pings on the laptop. My sound is low and the signal is a soft bell. On the security tray, a yellow banner scrolls across: GRANT CORRESPONDENCE — HALE, AURORA.
I don’t move right away. I take a breath, count to three, check my pulse with the pad of my thumb like I teach my staff. Sixty-eight and steady. Then I tap the banner.
