Nia spent much of the morning wondering what she would say.
At two o'clock, her phone rang.
"Nia?"
"Marcus."
His voice was deeper than she remembered, but the familiar warmth remained.
"How have you been?" she asked.
"That's a complicated question."
She laughed softly.
"Apparently, we're both using that answer these days."
He still trained occasionally.
He no longer competed.
"I found something else I wanted to do," he explained. "Eventually, I stopped thinking of that as giving up."
Nia listened.
"I'm glad."
"How about you?"
"Someone sent you messages?"
"Yes. An old photograph of my mother and Thomas, followed by a few warnings. Nothing that establishes who sent them."
"Have you reported them?"
"I've kept copies and told the people who need to know. I haven't received anything that suggests immediate physical danger, but I'm taking the situation seriously."
"Good."
He exhaled.
Nia closed her eyes.
"I remember."
"I don't think I realized how much it affected me until I left."
He blamed the organization for pressuring him, but he also blamed himself for allowing the situation to continue.
He wondered whether Nia and Evelyn had been right to challenge the program.
"I didn't want to be the injured athlete anymore," he said. "I didn't want to be the person everyone looked at and thought about that argument."
"So you left."
"I left because I wanted to make decisions that belonged to me. But I also left because I was exhausted."
He paused.
"Both things can be true."
Nia looked down at her hands.
Hearing him speak, she realized that his decision had been more complicated than that.
He had not disappeared.
"Marcus, there's something I've wanted to ask you for a long time."
"Go ahead."
"Did you ever blame me for what happened?"
"No."
Nia swallowed.
"Not even when I withdrew from the event?"
"No. I knew why you did it. I was grateful that someone had recognized what was happening."
"But I couldn't change the outcome."
"Neither could I."
He spoke gently.
"You were eighteen, Nia. You weren't responsible for managing the adults around us. You were another athlete trying to make sense of a situation that should never have become your burden."
"I used to think I should have done more."
"Of course you did. You cared about what happened."
"But caring about something doesn't mean you had the power to fix it."
Then Nia asked whether he knew anything about Adrian Cole.
"Adrian?"
"You remember him?"
"He wasn't part of the coaching staff. He handled some of the organization's external relationships."
"Do you know whether he was involved in the decisions about your injury?"
"Not directly, as far as I knew. He attended a meeting after I withdrew."
"What happened?"
"He said he was trying to protect me," Marcus recalled. "He told me that people in sports had long memories, and that I needed to think carefully about how I wanted to be known."
Nia felt her stomach tighten.
"Did you believe him?"
"At first. I was young. I thought he was giving me practical advice."
"And later?"
"Later, I wondered whether he was warning me or threatening me. I never found out."
Nia looked at the folder on her desk.
"Did he ever contact you again?"
"Once. A few years later, when I was working outside the sport. He asked whether I would consider speaking at a reunion event for former Ironbridge athletes."
"Did you go?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because the invitation described the program as a place that had helped young athletes overcome adversity. It didn't mention the people who had been pressured, the disputes over medical decisions, or the fact that some of us had left feeling abandoned."
"I didn't want to stand on a stage and help them tell a story that wasn't mine."
Nia understood.
"Have you heard from him recently?"
"No. But if he's contacting people now, I wouldn't assume it's because he's suddenly interested in making peace."
Nia appreciated that.
"I won't make assumptions," she said.
"Good."
Before they ended the call, Marcus asked her to pass along a message to Thomas.
"Tell him I'm not angry anymore. I was for a long time, but I'm not now."
"I will."
"And tell him I appreciate that he tried to help, even when things became complicated."
Nia promised she would.
She had expected Marcus to offer an explanation that would finally settle the old dispute.
Instead, he had reminded her that a person's life could continue without every question being answered.
Nia sent Thomas a message conveying Marcus's words.
Then she returned to the email from Adrian Cole.
She had not answered him.
It did, however, give her a reason to ask him a direct question.
She opened a new message and typed:
She paused.
Then she added:
She sent the email.
For the first time, Nia was no longer trying to discover the past through fragments and warnings.
What happens when a student at Whitmore Academy says no?