Chapter 7: Savannah

She was sitting in Julian's office when I got to the newsroom Monday morning, and I knew who she was before anyone said a word.

Dark hair, easy posture, the exact face from the cropped photo I'd stared at for too long four days ago, except in person she looked less like a rumor and more like a person, tired around the eyes in a way three-year-old photographs never showed.

"Lily, good, you're here." Julian waved me in, oblivious to the way my whole body had gone rigid in the doorway. "This is Savannah Reyes. She reached out about the hockey piece, said she had some background on the program from a few years back. Thought it might be useful for the feature."

"You're the one writing about the team," Savannah said, studying me with an expression I couldn't quite read, something careful and assessing that made me feel like she already knew exactly who I was before Julian said my name. "Lily Harper. Mason's sister."

"You know Mason?"

"I knew everyone, once." She said it simply, no obvious weight to it, though something in her voice suggested otherwise. "Julian, would you mind giving us a minute? I think Lily and I have some things to talk about that aren't really for the piece."

Julian glanced between us, clearly sensing something he didn't have the context for, and excused himself with the practiced ease of an editor who'd learned not to ask questions his reporters weren't ready to answer.

The door clicked shut, and Savannah studied me a long moment before she spoke again.

"You've been asking about me."

"I didn't think that would get back to you."

"Hartwell's smaller than people think. Everything gets back to everyone eventually." She didn't say it unkindly, just factually, the tone of someone who'd learned that lesson the hard way. "I heard you and Ethan have been talking again."

"That's not really your business."

"No. It's not." She said it without heat, and something about her lack of hostility unsettled me more than anger would have. "I'm not here to cause problems, Lily. I'm here because someone's been sending you anonymous messages, and I think I might know something about who."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. "How do you know about that?"

"Because I got messages too. Three years ago. Right before I left." She said it plainly, like reciting a fact she'd long since stopped being able to feel much about. "Different content. Same handwriting, if you can call a text message handwriting. Same instinct for exactly which detail would hurt the most."

"What did yours say?"

"That Ethan was hiding something from me. That I should look closer at what happened to his father." She watched my face carefully as she said it, gauging my reaction the way a reporter watches a source. "You don't know about his father."

"I know he died. Car accident, when Ethan was young. That's all anyone's ever told me."

"That's all anyone tells anyone." Savannah's mouth twisted, something bitter and old in it. "I spent months trying to find out more, after the messages started. I never got far. And then things got difficult enough at school that I decided it wasn't worth finding out anymore, and I left."

"Difficult how?"

"That's not a story I'm ready to tell a stranger, even one Ethan clearly still cares about." She said it without malice, an observation rather than an accusation, and stood, gathering a bag I hadn't noticed her carrying. "I'm not telling you this to scare you, Lily. I'm telling you because whoever did this to me three years ago is apparently still doing it, and I don't think you should walk into it as blind as I did."

"Why are you helping me? You don't know me."

"Because I liked Ethan, once, and whatever's true or not true about why we ended, he didn't deserve what happened after." She paused at the door, glancing back at me with something almost like sympathy. "Ask him about the accident. The real one, not the story everyone knows. And be careful who else you ask, because whoever's sending those texts already knows you're asking."

She left before I could form another question, and I sat alone in Julian's borrowed office a long moment, three new pieces of a puzzle I didn't have nearly enough of, and one fact settling cold and certain under all of it.

Whatever this was, it hadn't started with me. It hadn't started with Savannah either. It went back further than either of us, all the way to a car accident that had apparently never been the simple tragedy everyone at that dinner table treated it as.