“Either,” he says. “Both.”
“I’d grade you warmer and hope they forgave you,” I say, and he laughs. It sounds too close to the one I just cut.
My phone buzzes.GEORGINA – NETFLIX:Need Shae in the morning show too. Can we pull heartstring bites from the charity day? Nothing manipulative.
I text back:We have humility and teenagers. It’s basically a rosary.
She replies with a string of prayer-hand emojis. I picture her Pilates instructor correcting her form. I picture America correcting nothing.
Blake stands. “You want me at the night shoots with Harper, or are we pretending boundaries?”
“Pretend,” I say. “Then violate. It reads as romance.”
He pauses at the door. “You saw the donor clip was harmless.”
“I saw it was human,” I say. “Humans are combustible.”
He goes. I export. The blue bar crawls. The room hums.
I rest my hand on the shadow drive—the office whisper, the donor-dinner laughter, the hair tuck, the phone pocketed. People like me call it “context.” Truth is, context is a lockpick. We keep it for when the story slams a door.
On the monitor, frozen mid-frame, Shae leans toward Lila with that smile people mistake for mercy. I count three micro-movements and understand why Blake shoots her like this.
Yes, there’s something between them. Not what Lila thinks. Not what Harper fears. The thing that happens when a camera loves its subject and the subject returns the favor. Dark. Practical. Beautiful television.
I tap the monitor glass with a knuckle, a ridiculous superstition. “You’re not a saint,” I tell her under my breath. “You’re a mirror.”
Then I roll the cut and polish the edges until you can’t see my fingerprints anymore.
My mind circles on the wildcard that remains: the one person who stopped talking.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Shae
“New evidence discovered in the Halston case. Timeline inconsistencies. Witness recantations. How well do you really knowIt GirlShae Halston?” The Watcher’s latest episode drops on a Tuesday evening. I hear the distorted voice—raw, stretched thin—over the speaker in the charity’s common room.
I freeze mid-pour, laundry detergent bubbles sliding down my finger.
Marissa, one of the high school volunteers, pokes my shoulder, wide-eyed. “They’re saying you lied, Shae.”
Lies bend. Truth breaks.
Harper fights back within the hour—urgent, protective—but her voice has that edge of worry that makes people stupid.
Five minutes after Harper’s podcast airs, she’s calling to tell me she’s on the next flight to LAX. “We’ll make a weekend of it. A girl’s night. A recording session.”
I sigh, thinking I don’t have the mental space to record another episode. Not after Declan, the vigil, the internet true crime junkies working overtime. “Just us,” I say. “No audience. No podcast. Just truth.”
“Okay—just a girl’s weekend. I’ll rent that AirBnB in Ojai again. It’s so peaceful and charming, maybe I can get James to move to California.” I can practically hear her wistful smile over the phone line.
Charming.
This town has no idea what it’s harboring.
* * *
By dinnertime that night, Harper is curled up on my couch, second glass of wine cradled in her hands. “I—I almost believed. All of it.”
