Welcome to Penny’s Diary, a contemporary urban-fantasy serial. Read new diary entries every Thursday. Supporting readers can also access a weekly Writer’s Commentary, along with immersive audio and eBook editions, after each entry.
New to Penny’s story? Begin at the very first entry by clicking the button below and step into the moments where everything started to change.
Gramps brought us back from Clearwater after midnight.
Which already felt illegal.
Not actual-law illegal—more like body-clock illegal. Like my bones had filed a complaint and were waiting for management.
I remember the car lights sliding over the Meridian. I remember Ellie beside me, quiet and pale and too still in that post-Clearwater way that made my skin feel wrong.
I remember Gramps carrying both our bags because apparently I looked like someone who might lose a fight with a hoodie.
He kept saying the ordinary things.
“You two get some rest.”
“Don’t try to do too much tonight.”
“Your mom called earlier.”
Normal sentences.
That was the first bad sign.
Clearwater never arrives wearing a cape. It arrives wearing a cardigan and carrying a perfectly reasonable explanation.
The explanation was this:
Ellie was staying in the purple room.
As my friend.
To keep me company while Mom was away.
Gramps said it like it had always been true. Like it was kind. Like it made sense.
And it did.
At the time.
Ellie stood in the doorway of the purple room with her Clearwater bag hanging from one hand, looking foggy and tired and almost embarrassed.
“Guess this is me,” she said.
Not scared.
Not joking.
Just… accepting.
Like the room belonged to her.
She gave me a small, tired smile from the doorway.
And I smiled back like that was where she belonged.
I went to my room and put on my pajamas.
Very healthy. Very normal. Extremely lawsuit-worthy.
The bedside lamp was on.
I did not remember turning it on.
There was an envelope on my bedside table.
Cream paper letter inside—typed words. Small red eye stamped at the bottom.
My stomach dropped before my brain caught up.
The letter had instructions like a secret treasure hunt.
Except secret treasure hunts usually involve treasure, not whatever my life is currently doing.
It directed me back to my old room.
I do not remember leaving my apartment and crossing the hallway to Gramps’s apartment properly. I remember cold floor under my feet. The bedroom smelling like dust, laundry soap, and old buildings, which should not be a smell but absolutely is. I remember my hands shaking so badly the vent cover scraped the wall before I got it loose.
Green books were inside.
Three of them.
Old paper.
Mine.
I opened the first one and touched the first page.
The world snapped.
Not gently.
Ellie’s hand in mine on the couch.
The window-seat cache.
The Seven Trees tape.
Teddy’s police-box drawing.
The help paper warm against my fingers.
Clearwater coming.
Us touching the walls like idiots and asking the apartment to remember us.
Ellie in my bed.
Ellie laughing into my shoulder.
Ellie kissing me like the world had not earned access.
Then the purple room.
Friend.
The word hit harder the second time because now I knew what it had stolen.
I bent over with one hand on the floor, breathing like I had run miles instead of touched a diary page.
My head hurt.
Of course it did.
Clearwater had not erased everything—it had left Ellie close enough to see and moved her just far enough away to make the lie look kind.
I grabbed the diaries and ran.
Because Ellie was in the wrong room.
And I was not leaving her there.
I hit the purple-room doorway too fast.
Not elegant.
Not heroic.
More “unwell raccoon with a mission.”
Ellie turned from the bed, one hand still on the zipper of her Clearwater bag.
“Penny?”
She said my name carefully.
Not lovingly-carefully.
Friend-carefully.
Like I was worrying her, but from a safe distance.
Absolutely not.
I crossed the room and went straight for the window seat. The panel stuck for half a second, because apparently furniture also enjoys dramatic timing, and then it came loose.
The cache was still there.
I grabbed the backup dragon drawing so hard the paper bent at one corner.
Ellie stared at it when I shoved it into her hands.
“What is this?”
That hurt more than it should have.
“It’s you,” I said.
Which made no sense.
Also made every sense.
Her fingers touched the pencil lines.
For one second nothing happened.
Then black flickered under her skin.
Not a glow. Not a bruise. Something thin and fast, like dark veins remembering where they were supposed to be.
Ellie gasped.
The drawing hit the floor.
I caught her before she followed it.
Her whole body went stiff against me, then shook once, hard.
And then she made this tiny broken sound into my shoulder.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“I’m back,” she whispered.
That was it.
That was the line.
The room changed around it.
Not magically. Not visibly. The purple walls stayed purple. The bed stayed wrong. The window seat stayed open with our evidence breathing cold air like it had just survived surgery.
But Ellie was Ellie again.
My Ellie.
She clung to me with both hands, and I clung back because dignity had left the building and honestly could stay gone.
We did not talk through the whole thing.
Good.
Talking would have made it smaller.
We just moved.
Her bag came off the purple-room bed.
Her jacket went over my chair.
Her phone charger went into the outlet on my side of the room because she always steals that one and then pretends it was a coincidence.
Last was her pillow.
I carried it myself.
Then I put it back on my bed.
Not the purple-room bed.
Mine.
Ours.
Clearwater could have its fake label.
It was not getting her pillow.
I woke up with Ellie’s pillow beside mine.
Not in the purple room.
Not politely guest-roomed down the hallway like reality had suddenly developed boundaries.
Beside mine.
Ellie was curled toward me, one hand half-under her cheek, hair everywhere, looking exhausted in the specific way Clearwater leaves behind. Like sleep had happened, technically, but nobody had signed off on it.
I did not move at first.
Breathing felt like evidence.
Beautiful.
Hazardous.
Correct.
Ellie opened one eye.
“Still here,” she mumbled.
My throat did something stupid.
“Rude of you to make me check.”
She reached across the tiny space between us and touched my wrist. Not dramatic. Not romantic-movie lighting. Just two fingers, warm and real, checking I was there too.
We did not jump straight into opening the diary-chaos purple room.
That deserves recognition.
Possibly a plaque.
Instead we did the very advanced post-supernatural-reality-damage routine of staring at each other, checking the room, checking our own skin where the puncture marks still existed, and then deciding breakfast could be whatever required the least amount of competence.
Toast lost.
Cereal won by being pourable.
The purple room door was closed.
Except it was not the purple room anymore.
Ellie had named it sometime around cereal, while staring toward the hallway with her spoon paused halfway to her mouth.
“It’s not the purple room,” she said.
I looked up.
She swallowed, then nodded toward the hallway. “It held things. Even when it got us wrong.”
That was a very Ellie sentence.
Soft. Accurate. Extremely rude to my emotional stability.
“The Evidence Cave?” I tried.
“No.”
“Diary Chaos Office?”
“Absolutely not.”
She looked toward the door again.
“Memory Vault.”
I hated how right it sounded.
Serious name.
Serious room.
I kept thinking about it anyway.
Not because I wanted to open it.
Because I knew what was inside.
The cache had survived.
The tape. The Truthweaver laptop. The drawings. The notes.
The button camera was still there too, tucked with the cables like it had not recently been the worst thing hidden in Candy Steele’s bedroom.
All of it.
The proof that Candy’s eyes had done something to Steve.
The proof that we were not just scared teenagers building a conspiracy out of trauma and iced drinks.
Which, to be clear, was still possible as a lifestyle—just less likely now.
The help paper was still there too, tucked in the back of my current diary. I checked that one without taking it out properly. Just enough to know it had survived. Cream paper. Faint blue lines. Warm in a way paper had no business being.
Then I remembered the mailed one.
Not collected and left for me by Gramps this time.
I ran down the resident stairs and out the back door to the new mailboxes.
The mailed letter was there, waiting in mine, because apparently I now had a mailbox and a postal relationship with my own future panic.
The mailed backup still worked.
Differently now, but it worked.
I ran back upstairs and sat down, embarrassingly out of breath for someone who had only visited a mailbox.
Then my phone buzzed on the counter.
Teddy: Police box worked again. I remember.
That should have made my whole body relax.
It did not.
It helped, though.
Enough.
Ellie caught me looking toward the hallway again.
“Cascades?” she asked.
One word.
Correct word.
Public place. Food. Teddy. Normal chairs. Witnesses, in case the universe tried anything before noon.
“Cascades,” I said.
Because the Memory Vault could wait a couple more hours.
We were still here.
That had to count first.
Cascades was doing that Monday late morning thing where everyone looked personally offended by being awake.
Respectable, honestly.
Anne Harrison, the owner, was behind the counter, which usually meant Cascades was short-staffed or something had gone mildly wrong in the universe. She moved like coffee was a calling and not a beverage.
The pastry case had blueberry muffins, cinnamon rolls, and one sad-looking bran thing that felt like a threat.
I was aiming for iced coffee and emotional stability.
Then Ellie saw her sister, Felicia.
She was leaning near the pickup counter, laughing at something Charlotte had said while Charlotte wiped down the espresso machine. Not polite laughing. Real laughing. The kind that makes someone look younger for two seconds.
Charlotte’s copper-red hair was tied back today, and Felicia was dressed like a goth tornado with a beacon of brilliant red at the top.
Felicia lifted her drink when she spotted us.
“Redheads have to stick together,” she said, like that explained Charlotte, the universe, and maybe several crimes.
Charlotte gave this small half-smile.
Not unfriendly.
Not fully open either.
Cascades-normal.
Which meant, obviously, I noticed it too hard.
Ellie nudged my leg before I could accidentally stare like a surveillance goblin.
We had survived Clearwater, rescued our relationship from a purple room, and not yet restored Bobby before breakfast. I was not allowed to turn one friendly coffee-counter moment into a full investigation.
Probably.
Normal things keep becoming weird things later, and I am tired of acting surprised when they do.
Also because Felicia looked happy.
And apparently, in Meridia Falls, even that can feel like evidence.
After Ellie had a small chat with her sister, we headed upstairs to our regular booth.
Teddy arrived right on the stroke of noon, looking like the weekend had personally chewed on him.
He had got back late last night after spending most of the weekend in Halifax with his dad, which explained the shadows under his eyes but not the aggressive punctuality.
His hair was flattened on one side, and he had that careful Teddy expression that meant he was running on facts, loyalty, and probably one granola bar.
Still, he remembered.
That was the important part.
He said, “The TARDIS held,” like that was a normal sentence to say over iced drinks and muffins.
Honestly, after this summer, it almost was.
We kept the debrief small because Cascades was not the place to say things like reset category failure or my girlfriend was temporarily filed as guest-room furniture. Teddy listened to the practical version. Ellie’s hand stayed around her cup. Mine stayed under the table where nobody could see how tight it was.
Then someone behind us said Marilyn’s name.
Not loudly.
That was worse.
People are kinder when they are being loud. Loud at least admits it is doing something.
This was the quiet kind—the nasty kind dressed as concern.
The suspended Maple Crown judge had died in hospital yesterday. Injuries were too severe.
That was what the phone chatter became. News headlines. Local posts. Half-whispered updates. People saying his poor wife, his poor family, what a terrible thing, how awful, how senseless.
All true.
Also not the whole truth.
Then the shape shifted.
Because the witnesses had heard him shout Marilyn’s name.
Because Marilyn had been there.
Because Marilyn had survived.
And apparently surviving an attempt to run you down now counted as suspicious behavior if people already wanted you to be guilty of something.
Teddy went very still.
Ellie looked at me, and I could tell she was thinking the same thing I was.
The boardwalk had frozen.
Petals had hung in the air.
RG had done whatever RG does.
Marilyn had been the target, but we had all escaped death by a margin so thin I still felt sick thinking about it.
But the official story had kept marching forward without any of that.
In that version, we had pulled Marilyn out of the way. Barely. Somehow. Terrifying, but human.
So no frozen boardwalk. No petals. No RG—all of that scrubbed out for Marilyn.
Just enough rescue to explain why she was alive.
Not enough truth to explain anything else.
Crash.
Confusion.
Tragedy.
Investigation.
Nice clean words.
Clean enough to wash the impossible off everyone except Marilyn.
I looked down at my iced coffee, which suddenly tasted like melted guilt and vanilla syrup.
The reset had not protected Marilyn from this story.
The worst part was that no one at Cascades sounded like they hated her.
They sounded sorry.
That was how the accusation got in.
Wrapped in sympathy.
Marilyn had survived, and somehow the town was already making that another thing she had to answer for.
We waited until we were back in the Memory Vault before we let Monday become worse.
And yes, Teddy loved that name.
This was mature of us.
Also practical, because saying “So, about the blackmail video and whatever happened Saturday night” in Cascades felt like a good way to get barred from muffins.
In daylight, the room looked less haunted and more like three teenagers had tried to build a crime board during a weather event.
We did the Web notebook first.
To keep the reset memories the world had kept before they faded for us.
The altered crash story. The three of us pulling Marilyn out of the way. Somehow. No frozen boardwalk. No petals. No RG.
Ellie staying with me in the apartment as my friend while Mom was away.
The purple room.
The safe version.
The wrong version.
And, weirdly, one useful version.
Because if Clearwater had filed Ellie as my friend, then Candy had lost one piece of leverage too.
No public little smile about me and Ellie.
No carefully sharpened comment about who was sleeping where.
No girlfriend-shaped leverage.
For once, the reset had stolen something from Candy.
I did not like being grateful to reality damage.
But I wrote it down anyway.
Then we restored Bobby.
Teddy did not talk while we did it. He just re-pinned the threads and checked the Seven Trees tape was still in the cache where we had put it.
The tape was still there.
That should have felt like power.
It did not.
Taking it to Sergeant Dillon was not an option.
The beginning showed Steve on a date with Candy, there willingly enough that no one watching cold would understand the moment his choices stopped being his. We could not explain what Candy had done to him without explaining magic first, and Isaac Steele’s voice congratulating her would prove he knew something without proving exactly what.
Worse, Candy still had leverage over Steve—and over Ellie.
If we showed the tape and failed, she would know exactly what evidence we had. Steve would still be trapped, Ellie still exposed, and Isaac would have time to make the real version disappear.
So the tape stayed hidden.
Evidence, not a weapon.
Not until we understood who else was holding the handle.
Teddy reached for a fresh Post-it note.
He wrote:
Saturday. Sergeant Dillon Away. Jewelry Store Robbery.
Then he told us about Saturday night, while Ellie and I had been tucked up in our Clearwater beds.
Or imprisoned.
Depends how generous you are feeling.
Teddy had come back Saturday afternoon to help Steve with the whole get-his-dad-out-of-town-before-Candy’s-deadline problem. They came up with an overnight camping trip.
So Steve and Sergeant Dillon had left town like planned. Camping. Distance. No signal. No convenient blackmail deadline.
That should have felt like winning.
It did for about half a second.
Teddy stayed around to “observe.”
He said nothing obvious happened at Seven Trees Farm.
No shady meeting he could see. No dramatic Isaac Steele villain entrance under moonlight. No tractor chase, which I personally feel was inconsiderate after everything else this town has done.
Then he said Baines Goldsmiths on Main Street had been robbed late Saturday.
Teddy kept his voice flat, which is how Teddy sounds when the inside of his head is making twelve charts at once.
He had gone to Main Street when he heard the police siren. Not close enough to get noticed. Close enough to see who was standing where.
Carlton Baines was there, obviously.
An RCMP deputy was there, also obviously.
But Isaac Steele was there too, close to Carlton in that rich-men-at-a-problem way.
Not panicked.
Not surprised.
Useful.
That was the word Teddy used.
“He looked useful.”
I hated it immediately.
Useful meant not shocked enough. Useful meant inserted into the shape of things before anyone had time to ask why. Useful meant the kind of man adults let stand near police tape because money and confidence apparently create their own laminated pass.
Teddy was clear about what he did not know.
He did not see Isaac take anything.
He did not hear the deputy agree to anything.
He did not have proof the deputy was wrong, corrupt, careless, or just having the worst Saturday of his professional life.
But he did see Carlton pass him something small.
A folded envelope, maybe.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe exactly the kind of nothing people pass over when they want everyone else to look away.
After that, Teddy went back to Halifax before the Clearwater reset window, because apparently even surveillance goblins have dads, treatment appointments, and inconvenient geography.
What he brought back was timing.
Baines Goldsmiths hit.
Isaac present.
Carlton close to the deputy.
And Sergeant Dillon nowhere near the original version of the story.
That was when the win curdled properly.
Because we had thought the point was getting the sergeant away so Steve would not be destroyed.
Maybe it was—maybe it was also getting Sergeant Dillon away so someone else could build a different story of the robbery without him in it.
I picked up the marker.
My hand was steadier than I felt, which was rude but useful.
On another Post-it note, I wrote:
BAINES GOLDSMITHS ROBBERY. WHY SERGEANT DILLON?
Then I stuck it under Steve’s thread and near Isaac’s name.
None of us said anything.
Because Bobby had the question.
And for once, not knowing the answer felt safer than guessing it.
Candy messaged Ellie at 10:17am.
I know because Ellie stared at her phone like it had hissed.
Which, considering the sender, seemed fair.
The message was not mean.
That was how I knew it was dangerous.
Mean would have been easier. Mean has teeth and bad spelling and usually too many exclamation marks. This was bright and tidy and practical, which is Candy Steele’s version of putting a knife in a gift bag.
She was “just checking” about the Three Falls party.
She wanted to make sure everyone stayed safe.
She wondered whether Ellie could maybe ask her dad what the rules actually were about gatherings there, because obviously nobody wanted trouble, and it would be so much better if everyone knew the proper limits.
She even added a little heart.
I have never trusted punctuation less.
Ellie read the message twice.
Then she handed me the phone.
I did not need to read it twice.
Candy was not asking Ellie for help.
She was attaching Mayor Horton’s daughter to the party before anything went wrong.
If Ellie asked, Candy could say she had checked.
If Ellie refused, Candy could say Ellie was being difficult, or secretive, or weirdly hostile about a harmless summer party.
If Mayor Horton gave even one practical sentence about rules, Candy could polish it until it looked like approval.
That was the leash.
Not around Ellie’s neck exactly.
Around her last name.
“She wants me to make it respectable,” Ellie said. “The Mayor’s seal of approval.”
Her voice was flat, which meant the anger had gone cold.
I wanted to say don’t answer.
I wanted to say block her.
I wanted to say let Candy build her own trap without borrowing your dad’s job title—or your sense of responsibility.
Except Ellie was already looking at the message the way she looks at a locked door.
Not because she wants to open it.
Because she knows someone will blame her if she doesn’t.
“That’s the trick,” I said. “If you say no, she gets to use that too.”
Ellie gave one small nod.
No drama. No speech.
Just understanding.
Candy had made the helpful thing dangerous and the refusal useful.
Which was honestly very efficient.
Evil, but efficient.
Before lunch, we got the black light out of the window seat, drew the curtains, and checked our skin for the triangle glyphs.
Still there on both of us.
Great.
Then, while I made sandwiches, Ellie called her dad.
Not because Candy deserved help.
Because Candy had built the kind of question where ignoring it made Ellie look careless, and Ellie would rather chew glass than give Candy a real safety excuse.
She did it carefully.
No names that mattered.
No Candy-is-socially-constructing-a-death-maze context.
Just a small summer gathering at Three Falls, some people from school, and did he know the actual rules so nobody did something stupid?
Mayor Horton gave the dad version first, apparently.
Which was not short.
Ellie summarized because she loves me and also because if I had to listen to the full mayor version, I might have aged into dust.
No alcohol.
No blocked paths.
Stick to the lower pool.
No going near the water after dark.
No fires.
No pretending “everyone else is doing it” counts as permission, which felt personally aimed at teenagers as a species.
And then the important part.
A trained lifeguard needed to be present.
“He said it was not approval,” Ellie told me. “Just rules.”
That should have helped.
It did not.
Because Candy did not need a signed permit with a gold sticker and Mayor Horton wearing a sash.
She needed phrases.
Safety rules.
Checked with Ellie.
Mayor’s daughter asked.
No one wants trouble.
Responsible.
Candy could turn all of that into a polite little shield before anyone even arrived.
Ellie sat on the edge of the bed with her phone in both hands, thumbs still but ready. She looked angry in that quiet way that makes her seem calmer than she is.
“I can send her the exact wording,” she said. “Not one extra word.”
“That still gives her something.”
“I know.”
She sent it anyway.
Because not sending it also gave Candy something.
That was the part I hated most.
There was no clean move—just the least useful damage.
Ellie typed out a long message about what her dad had said, and she sent it to Candy. Then she put her phone face down after, like that might stop it being part of the trap.
It buzzed almost immediately.
Candy hearted the message.
Of course she did.
Some people use locks.
Some people use threats.
Candy Steele builds traps out of paperwork and then signs them with a heart.
Steve appeared next.
Not in person.
Thank goodness, because I was not emotionally prepared to look at his face and also pretend I did not know Candy had turned his life into a leash with hair gel.
It was a photo first.
Candy’s story.
Because of course.
Three Falls planning notes spread across a table, one iced drink, one carefully visible corner of Steve’s hand, and the caption:
Making sure everyone’s covered.
Covered.
Adorable word choice from someone currently using blackmail as a group activity.
Ellie saw it and went very quiet.
My phone buzzed two minutes later.
Teddy: Steve’s been asked to “check with his dad” about parking / access / patrol stuff for the party. Not formal. Just enough to sound safe.
There it was.
Ellie for Mayor Horton.
Steve for Sergeant Dillon.
Then another message came in.
Teddy: She also wants Steve to be the lifeguard.
Of course Steve was a lifeguard—of course he was.
Baywatch Steve, reporting for emotional blackmail duty.
Apparently he was trained for school swim events, because why stop at boyfriend-shaped permission when you can add rescue cover too?
Steve again for “responsible adult adjacent,” even though Steve was seventeen and currently being emotionally blackmailed through a party-planning list.
Marilyn for whatever Candy planned to turn into entertainment.
And me…
Well.
Candy had not put my name on the board yet.
That was how I knew I was on it.
The photo did not show Steve’s face. That somehow made it worse. Just his hand near Candy’s neat writing, like proof of boyfriend participation without proof of actual personhood.
Public Steve.
Useful Steve.
Steve-shaped permission.
Then another message came in.
Teddy: Steve’s gone quiet again. That seems to be his current version of functioning.
I wanted to throw my phone into the harbor, but that would have been inconvenient because I still need it for evidence, texts, and doom scrolling like a professional.
So I saved the screenshot instead.
By the time Candy’s story expired, the damage would not.
People would remember that Steve was helping. Ellie had checked rules. Candy was being responsible. Everyone was covered.
Not trapped.
Covered.
I looked at the screenshot again, and the party stopped looking like a party at all.
It looked like Bobby.
Only Candy was the one moving the strings.
Sean’s birthday today.
Rain.
Not dramatic rain.
Not movie rain.
Just steady gray Meridia Falls rain that made the windows look tired and turned Main Street into one long reflection of people trying to get errands done anyway.
Which felt unfairly appropriate.
Also very Sean.
Sean loved rain. Proper rain. Splashing rain. The kind that made Mom say, “You are not going outside in that,” and made Sean hear, apparently, “Begin your expedition immediately.”
I did not say “It’s Sean’s birthday” out loud first thing.
Some dates announce themselves without help.
They sit on your chest before you open your eyes. They make ordinary things feel slightly tilted. They turn cereal into a decision and socks into an achievement.
Ellie knew.
She did not make a face about it. She did not ask if I wanted to talk. She just put my hoodie on the chair beside me instead of across the room and made hot chocolate even though it was technically morning and technically July.
Technicalities are for people whose families have not been used as emotional building materials by the universe.
There was an envelope from Gramps on the table in the hallway outside the apartment.
My name on the front.
Inside was one of Sean’s old trick playing cards.
The Seven of Hearts.
Of course it was the Seven of Hearts.
Small. Bent at one corner. Soft at the edges from being handled too much. The kind of card that looked normal until you knew where to press.
Gramps had written one sentence on a folded note.
Thought you might want him with you today.
Rude.
Kind.
Devastating.
Sean used to carry that whole pack of trick playing cards everywhere, because he had decided stage magic was not a hobby but a calling, obviously.
Except sometimes he got it right.
That was the annoying part.
Sometimes he would flick his wrist, grin like he had just robbed reality, and the Seven of Hearts would be there between his fingers.
Dad would say, “Again.”
Sean always did.
Back then, magic meant sleeves and bent cards and Sean looking unbearably pleased with himself.
I missed that kind—the fake kind. The safe kind.
I put the card in my pocket.
Not for evidence.
Not for Bobby.
Not because it proved anything except that once there had been a boy who believed a playing card could make the world hold still for three seconds if you smiled hard enough.
Ellie watched me do it and only said, “Walter said whenever we’re ready.”
The Veiled Isle.
Same as Dad’s birthday.
This was what we did with grief in this family. Took it somewhere old and quiet and let the rain do some of the talking.
That was the right size of sentence.
Not too big.
Not too careful.
Just enough.
So I put on my shoes, kept Sean’s card in my pocket, and decided we would do one ordinary tradition badly on purpose.
For his birthday.
The causeway was slick with rain, and the water on both sides looked gray enough to be personally judging us.
The Veiled Isle Gardens were nearly empty, because most people have the survival instinct not to visit an island charity garden in the rain. We passed the old stone buildings, the clipped hedges, the sign for the mazes, and the little path toward the Garden of Remembrance.
No picnic this time.
The weather would not allow it.
I kept one hand in my pocket around Sean’s Seven of Hearts.
It got warmer there.
Or maybe my hand did.
Science was not invited.
The Garden of Remembrance had benches, wet lavender, and little name plaques catching dull light.
One of them was Sean’s.
That should have made it easier.
It did not.
Ellie stopped beside me, looking at the rain gathered on the leaves.
Sean would not have complained about the rain.
He would have run ahead into our maze, then acted personally betrayed when his shoes got soaked. Dad would have pretended not to laugh. Gramps would have said something about fresh air being good for people, which is adult code for “I also regret this.”
And Mom…
Well.
Mom did not visit here with us much.
I told Ellie that.
Not all of it.
Enough.
She understood.
No performance. No careful sympathy face.
Just Ellie, standing with me in the rain, letting Sean be annoying and alive for a minute in the space between us.
We did not solve anything.
While Gramps talked with the gardeners, we just walked.
Past wet roses.
Past the place where people remembered things on purpose.
To our maze entrance.
Then to the wooden tower at the center.
And when Ellie slipped her hand into mine, she did not squeeze like she was trying to pull me out of the grief.
She just stayed there in it with me.
That was better.
We went to McDonald’s after Veiled Isle because Sean would have approved of honoring his birthday with fries and questionable ketchup distribution.
He had strong opinions about nuggets.
Also weak opinions about napkins, which is why every car he ever entered immediately became a crime scene.
Gramps drove us there with the heater on low and the windshield wipers making that tired rubber sound that somehow made the whole day feel even wetter.
He did not ask if I was okay.
Gramps is smarter than that.
He just said, “Sean always stole fries before anyone sat down properly.”
Which was true.
Rude.
Historic.
Important.
We sat in the corner booth with wet sleeves, damp hair, and a paper bag between us that smelled like salt and warm cardboard. Gramps took the outside seat, because apparently even grief has seating arrangements, and Ellie slid in beside me without making a thing of it.
I put Sean’s Seven of Hearts beside the fries.
Not in a shrine way.
Just there.
Like he had stepped away to refill his drink and was about to come back complaining that I stole the good fries.
Gramps looked at the card.
Then he looked away.
That was somehow worse than if he had said something.
Mom called while we were eating.
Of course she did.
She asked the practical things first. Had I eaten? Was I sleeping? Was Ellie still with me? Was Gramps checking in? Was Clearwater okay this time?
Clearwater was not okay this time.
Clearwater had put my girlfriend in the wrong room and tried to turn love into guest accommodation.
I said, “It was fine.”
Because sometimes lying to your mom is the only way to keep one part of your life from becoming another room you have to clean up later.
Then she paused.
Just long enough.
“I know what day it is,” she said.
That was the line that landed.
Not because it fixed anything.
Because it did not.
She knew what day it was, but she still sounded far away from it. Like Sean’s birthday was a sad fact on a calendar, not a boy who used to steal fries and play card tricks and make Dad laugh even when Dad was trying to be serious.
I said, “Yeah.”
Excellent contribution, Penny.
Future historians will be moved.
Mom said she wished she could be there.
I believed her.
I also believed that being there would not have made her know what to do with the grief any better.
Those can both be true, apparently, because feelings enjoy being inconvenient.
After we hung up, Ellie slid the fries closer to me without comment.
Gramps did too.
Not dramatically.
Just one old hand nudging the paper carton an inch closer, like fries were medicine and we were all pretending that made sense.
I ate one.
Then another.
Then I put the card back in my pocket.
Sean did not come back.
Dad did not either.
Clearwater could rewrite rooms and labels and whole pieces of the world if it wanted.
Some absences stayed exactly where they were.
Candy found a new way to borrow Ellie.
Technically, it was party planning.
Technically, Ellie had agreed to help with the safety-message version because Candy had already wrapped the Mayor’s rules around the whole thing like a ribbon on a trap.
Technically, I understood.
Emotionally, I wanted to set the ribbon on fire.
The meeting was at Candy’s house after lunch, because apparently Three Falls required a planning committee now. Not a party. A committee. With notes. And roles. And probably someone saying “let’s circle back” while arranging teenage doom.
Peak Candy.
Ellie stood by the bedroom door with her bag over one shoulder, looking annoyed before she even left.
“I hate that going makes more sense than not going,” she said.
That was exactly it.
Candy had made absence useful.
If Ellie went, Candy got access to her name and her dad’s rules.
If Ellie refused, Candy got to act wounded and responsible and say Ellie clearly did not care whether people were safe.
Very tidy.
Very awful.
I tried to be mature and not sulk about my girlfriend being summoned to the pastel command center.
I achieved partial maturity.
Maybe forty percent.
Ellie kissed my cheek before she left, quick and quiet, like she knew I needed the real thing stated without making it dramatic.
“I’ll send you anything weird.”
“So everything?”
That got me a tiny smile.
Then she was gone.
Teddy texted too, because apparently even my phone had decided I should not be left alone with my own brain.
He was delivering print orders near Main Street later and had somehow turned that into an extremely casual offer to check on me, because Teddy thinks feelings are less embarrassing if they come with logistics.
I told him I was fine.
This was a lie, but a socially acceptable one.
The apartment felt wrong immediately.
Not reset-wrong. Not purple-room-wrong.
Just too quiet.
The Memory Vault door was closed down the hallway. Bobby was waiting behind it with all the chaos held together with strings and push pins.
I did not open it.
That also deserves recognition.
I almost texted Teddy back and asked him to stop by after all—almost.
But Teddy had print orders, Ellie had Candy, and I had the extremely mature plan of leaving before my thoughts started chewing through the furniture.
So I went to Cascades, because being alone in the apartment with my thoughts felt like giving them home-field advantage.
I was halfway through pretending to choose between iced coffee and emotional collapse when I saw Marilyn Moreau near the back table.
Alone.
Watching me like she had been deciding whether to leave before I noticed her.
I walked over before either of us could make a better decision.
She looked like she might leave right up until I sat down.
Which was fair.
I also looked like I might leave, and I was the one sitting.
She had a lemonade in front of her that she had not touched. No pageant smile. No Candy-adjacent polish. Her hair was still neat because apparently Marilyn Moreau could survive supernatural boardwalk murder and public suspicion without allowing frizz to win.
Respect, honestly.
Her hand was around the glass.
The scraped palm was gone.
Not mostly healed. Not covered with a bandage. Gone.
I noticed because I had watched Ellie press tissues into that hand on the boardwalk as the sirens got closer.
Marilyn noticed me noticing.
She turned her palm up like it belonged to someone else.
“That part fixes itself fast these days,” she said.
Then her fingers closed around the lemonade glass again.
“Other parts, not so much.”
For a minute, neither of us said anything useful.
Cascades made normal noises around us. Cups. Chairs. Charlotte calling out orders. Someone laughing near the window like the world had not recently bent itself around a man trying to kill Marilyn.
Marilyn kept her voice low.
“That crash story is such a lie.”
Not a question.
I looked at my drink.
Very brave.
She did not list everything. That was the worst part. She did not say the timing was wrong. She did not say there had been no possible way for us to save her in time. She did not say how she had been about to die and then suddenly wasn’t.
She just watched me like she needed one person to stop sanding the edges off what happened.
I could not give her the truth.
Not all of it.
Maybe not even most of it.
But I could give her one piece.
“You didn’t imagine it,” I said.
Marilyn looked down at her lemonade.
“I should probably say thank you,” she said.
The words sounded like they had sharp edges.
“For pulling me away.”
I did not know what to do with that.
“You don’t have to make it neat,” I said.
Her hand tightened around the lemonade glass.
That was the whole reaction.
No dramatic sobbing. No grateful speech. No immediate friendship bracelet ceremony, which was honestly thoughtful of her.
Just her fingers whitening against glass while the rest of her face stayed almost perfect.
“Everyone keeps looking at me like surviving was something I did to him,” she said.
I hated how much that sounded like Meridia Falls.
Like the town had taken a man shouting her name, a public scandal, one rescue that made no sense, and turned Marilyn into the suspicious part because she was still breathing.
She looked toward the counter, where Candy was not.
For once.
“I thought being out of her orbit would feel better.”
There it was—not a confession.
A crack.
I did not ask what Candy had done. I did not say Steve’s name. I did not drag Seven Trees or Isaac Steele or RG or the Memory Vault into the middle of Cascades and set them on fire.
Growth.
“I don’t think out of orbit is the same as escape,” I said.
Marilyn gave the smallest almost-laugh.
Bitter. Tiny. Real.
“No,” she said. “I’m learning that.”
Then she picked up her lemonade and finally drank some, like that ended the official meeting neither of us had agreed to attend.
Nothing got fixed.
That would have been too easy, and also suspicious, and frankly we are over capacity on suspicious.
But Marilyn stopped being only Candy’s shadow.
And that felt like something worth writing down before the town tried to edit it.
Ellie came back before dinner looking like she had survived a meeting with scented candles and strategic evil.
No visible injuries.
Unless you count patience loss, which I do.
She dropped her bag by my chair and said, “It has roles now.”
That was all I needed to know this was worse.
She apologized for no text updates. She said Candy was like a prison warden.
Apparently Three Falls was no longer just a party. It was a “small organized gathering,” which is what adults call things right before teenagers prove language is meaningless.
Candy had a list.
Not a messy list. Not a normal person list.
A Candy list.
Arrival times. Food. Music. Who was bringing blankets. Who was making sure nobody went near the water after dark. Who had “checked safety expectations.” Who could “help keep things relaxed.”
Relaxed.
Another suspicious word.
Ellie was rules.
Steve was access.
Marilyn was attendance.
Candy had not written that last one down like a villain in a children’s cartoon, obviously. But Marilyn’s name was there, attached to some harmless-sounding reason she should come. Support. Normality. Everyone moving on.
I hated all of those words.
Penny Summers was not on the list.
Which was very funny if you enjoy being threatened by stationery.
Teddy called while Ellie was still explaining, because apparently Candy’s planning document had achieved emergency status.
We put him on speaker.
He listened quietly, which is Teddy for absolutely furious.
“She’s making positions,” he said. “Not plans. Positions.”
Ellie sat beside me and rubbed one hand over her face.
“She’s making it so if anything happens, everyone was already in the right place.”
I thought about Marilyn and her lemonade.
About surviving being treated like a suspicious hobby.
About Steve’s hand in Candy’s photo, useful without a face.
About the Mayor’s rules getting folded into Candy’s pretty little safety wrapper.
I did not want to go.
Not in a cute, dramatic, complain-about-social-events way.
I mean my whole body rejected the idea like Three Falls had already sent a warning through the floorboards.
But the party had stopped being something we could skip and complain about from a safe distance.
Candy was building a story.
And stories do not need you to attend to use you.
They only need your shape.
That was the problem.
If I went, I walked into whatever she had arranged.
If I stayed away, she still had Ellie, Steve, Marilyn, and a perfectly respectable gap where I was supposed to be.
Candy had not invited me into a party.
She had left a space for me on the board.
Gramps had turned the Meridian lobby counter into a command center for either a restaurant opening or a hostage negotiation involving dessert spoons.
Possibly both.
He was on the phone behind the counter, using his calm business voice, which somehow made cutlery sound like a matter of public safety.
The new restaurant menus were there too, half-stacked beside supplier notes, staff schedules, linen samples, and one scribbled reminder that said:
Check dessert spoons.
I did not know dessert spoons required that level of supervision, but Gramps looked serious about it, so I respected the spoons.
Mostly.
Ellie had lunch later with her dad and sister.
Her dad had a gap between meetings, and apparently that was enough time for Horton family business.
Not secret. Not dramatic. Just the kind of conversation where “family vacation plans” and “Dad wanting both daughters in the same place for once” got used in the same sentence.
I was not invited, which was fine.
Actually fine.
Mostly fine.
Some things are allowed to be just family, even when your girlfriend leaving for lunch makes your nervous system act like it has been abandoned in the woods.
The Meridian lobby had a little tourist information stand now, because apparently opening a restaurant also meant becoming useful to people in sandals.
Maybe that was why the brochures caught Ellie’s eye.
She picked up a glossy one from the pile while Gramps was still on the phone, arguing politely about delivery times.
Willowfen.
Historic lakeside garden town.
Old hotel.
Boat rides.
Markets.
Walking paths.
Lots of smiling people in linen who had clearly never been hunted by a social weapon in lip gloss.
“Looks peaceful,” Ellie said.
That should have made me suspicious.
It did, obviously.
But also.
There were pictures of a lake with evening lights on it. A hotel with flower baskets. A little street of shops that probably sold overpriced jam and postcards with ducks on them.
It looked like somewhere nothing knew us.
No Candy.
No Clearwater.
No boardwalk petals.
No Bobby.
Just bad tourist maps and Ellie pretending not to buy every pretty postcard in a five-mile radius.
“We deserve a vacation,” Ellie said quietly.
Which was a very dangerous sentence.
Mostly because she was right.
I leaned over her shoulder.
“After the party?” I said.
“Before school starts.”
“Ambitious.”
“Very reckless. We might even eat breakfast somewhere that doesn’t know our medical history.”
Scandalous.
Gramps came off the phone and caught us looking.
He did not tease.
That was how I knew he understood more than he was saying.
“Keep it,” he said, tapping the Willowfen brochure. “No harm in looking.”
There is absolutely harm in looking, actually.
Looking is how wanting starts.
Wanting is how the universe finds your weak spots and puts them in a spreadsheet.
Ellie smiled at me like she knew exactly what I was doing and had decided not to be smug about it.
Heroic restraint, honestly.
For about ten minutes, with the Meridian full of opening plans and Gramps muttering about dessert spoons and Ellie’s hand brushing mine over a picture of a lake, I let myself do the worst possible thing.
I imagined us getting something normal.
Ellie left for lunch with her dad and sister at 12:40pm.
I know because I checked the time after she went, like a normal person whose girlfriend had only been gone for four minutes and not, for example, abducted by scheduling.
She kissed my cheek outside the Meridian, told me she would be back soon, and took the Willowfen brochure with her because Felicia apparently had strong opinions about markets, old hotels, and “places that look haunted but in a cute way.”
Good.
Safe.
Family lunch.
Normal.
I made it all the way to the little bench on Main Street, near the side alley, before Candy found me.
Obviously.
She sat down like we were friends.
Not beside me exactly. Just close enough that leaving would look rude and staying would feel like volunteering for a dental procedure without anesthetic.
She had sunglasses on her head, perfect hair, and the calm expression of someone who had never once been haunted by a purple room at midnight.
“Penny,” she said. “You look tired.”
I considered biting her.
Spiritually.
Her smile did not move much.
She looked toward Main Street, where people were walking past with shopping bags and coffee cups and no idea that my bloodstream had turned into ice.
“I think it’s sweet,” she said, “how quickly you and Ellie fell in love before everyone decided you were just friends.”
There it was.
One sentence.
Polished.
Soft.
A blade with a bow on it.
I did not move.
I couldn’t.
Clearwater had rewritten Ellie into the purple room. The apartment had accepted it. Reality had worn the lie like clean clothes.
Candy should not have known there had ever been anything else.
She glanced at me then, finally.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not judging. I just like knowing what people were before everyone decided otherwise.”
Then she stood up.
That was the whole warning.
No villain speech. No explanation. No magic glitter. No helpful confession delivered because apparently evil had poor boundaries.
Just Candy walking away in perfect sandals while I sat on a bench with a dead phone grip and a heart trying to climb out through my ribs.
Ellie came back later with Felicia’s Willowfen opinions and a bag of chips she claimed were for both of us.
I must have looked wrong, because her smile vanished before she reached me.
If you’d like to talk about this diary entry, you’re welcome to share your thoughts in the chat.
Stay tuned, stay enchanted, and stay connected!
Warmest Regards,
DB
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