My Press Conference

I hold my own press conference at 5:00 p.m. on the steps of the AG annex because if I do it anywhere prettier the town will call it theater. Nico hates the timing, Callum loves it, and my mother sends a message that says only I am watching. Poppy stays in the secure car with a marshal because I refuse to make confession a child's viewing assignment.

I do not use notes. Notes would let me pretend the truth had not already been rehearsed by everyone except me.

"Six years ago," I say into the microphones, "I signed off on an identification I should not have accepted as final. I did so under pressure, grief, and a set of assurances that now appear to have been structured to end scrutiny, not pursue truth."

The crowd stills. Cameras lean in. I keep going.

"I was wrong. That wrongness did not stay private. It became part of a system that let Nina Baird be buried under my sister's name, let my husband and his mother manage the consequences in secret, and let me live inside a lie I benefited from more than I admitted. I am cooperating fully. I expect scrutiny. I deserve it."

Somewhere in the back, someone shouts, "Did you marry him knowing?"

"No," I say. "I married him after deciding not to know enough."

That answer moves through the crowd like weather. It is not exonerating. It is, however, true in the only way I have left. Reporters start firing questions faster. Harbor House. Tessa. Poppy. Owen. My mother. The ring. I answer what I can, refuse what would endanger witnesses, and let the refusals look like refusals rather than elegant misdirection.

When it's over, Callum exhales beside me like he has been underwater. "That," he says, "is either career suicide or the first honest thing Greybridge has heard in years."

I look past him toward the secure car where Poppy is visible only as a small outline in the rear seat. "Probably both."

The first network chyron appears before I reach the steps: SLOANE MERCER HART ADMITS ROLE IN WRONG-GRAVE COVER-UP. Under it, Owen's campaign issues a statement within three minutes distancing him from my "emotionally conflicted self-report."