She did me the benefit of acting like I had a chance, even though we both knew that wasn’t a fair thing to ask. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “But what I can do is let you know first, okay? I’ll let you know what we find out. Sit tight, and don’t talk to the media.”

Of course I wouldn’t. But I could already see the headline. The hook. The man who saved me had come back looking for me twenty years later. And now he was dead outside my house. I could already see the fingers flying across the keyboard, matching the speed of the rumors. The Girl from Widow Hills. Moving backward in time, from the ten-year anniversary, to the five-year, to the original event.

A part two: Where are they now? From hero to victim. From victim to witness. A reshuffling of roles. As if, all along, we were in a tragedy—it had just taken us a few extra decades to get there.

The detective left, and I was still staring at the closed door when Bennett shifted behind me.

He was holding his phone out in front of him, like he was following a map. Though he’d obviously just performed a quick Google search, seen all he needed to know. As his hand dropped to the side, I saw my photo from years earlier, smiling at me from upside down.

I couldn’t read his expression. “I wasn’t trying to hide it,” I said. “I just tried to move on. The things people say, Bennett. The letters they would send. It’s a thing that happened to me, and I don’t even remember it. I mean something to them. I can’t be who they want me to be. I don’t want to.”

“I’m not judging you,” he said. And yet something had closed off. A door we’d just pushed through swinging back. “It’s just, I’ve known you for over two years. We know each other pretty well, Liv. Were you ever planning on telling me?”

All I could feel now was the space between us. A rift opening up.

“We don’t really know that much about each other,” I said, and his face shifted, like I’d hurt him. I’d been wrong about him—there was plenty on the surface that was easy to read if I watched closely.

Maybe it wasn’t for his lack of trying—he’d invited me to his family home, after all. Maybe he’d been able to read into me more than I’d thought, and understood that he had to move slowly, handle with care. But he wasn’t being honest here, either. “Come on, I didn’t even know about your girlfriend until yesterday.”

“It’s a little different, not bringing up the ex who dumped you. And, like, not telling someone you were famous and changed your name. Seems like something pretty important.”

The truth was, I hadn’t considered telling him. Or anyone. It was a thing I had fought to keep behind me for so long, it had never occurred to me to let it out voluntarily.

“I guess that’s my answer, then,” he said.

“I’ve never told anyone, Bennett.” Couldn’t he understand? It wasn’t a lack of trust in him specifically. It was everyone. It was survival.

“No one? No boyfriend? No college roommate?”

I shook my head. Nothing had ever lasted long enough that it would need to come up. And that was probably why I didn’t go to Charlotte with Bennett for Thanksgiving last year, volunteering instead to remain as the hospital’s on-call contact throughout the holidays. Preferring a makeshift dinner with a group of people who had stayed behind. Joining the open-to-all potluck organized by Sydney Britton; having pie with Rick after, watching a football game on his couch.

“No one,” I reiterated.

He frowned. “Don’t you think that’s a little messed up?”

Oh, didn’t I. As if I needed him to say it, to see it. Of course, I couldn’t really escape the fallout. Change your name, change your address—none of it could ever change what had happened. It had screwed up my life back then. And it was screwing it up now, just in a different way: twisting myself to fit the confines of a safe and quiet life.

“You have no idea,” I said, my teeth gritted together. “You have no idea what it’s like. We had to move from Kentucky to Ohio in the middle of high school after the ten-year anniversary, it got so bad. You should see what it did to my mom, the things it pushed her to.” I shook my head. There was a faint tremor in my fingers, but my voice kept dropping, going steady somehow, even as I was falling apart. “I moved away from her, all alone, to start over here.” How to explain the feeling of panic, deep in my gut; waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, my heart racing, sheets thrown back—like I was still trying to escape. Wondering if I ever would.

“Okay,” he said, eyes closed. “I get it. I’m sorry.” He looked around the room, out the window, back at me. “We don’t have to do this right now.”

But I wanted to tell him something on my own, something he wouldn’t just read on his phone later. “I have a scar,” I told him. I lifted my left arm out to the side. “Can’t move my shoulder above this.”

His eyes settled on my upper arm. I knew he’d seen it before. “I thought it was from an accident.”

“It was an accident,” I said. “Dislocated shoulder. Fractured humerus. I needed surgery to get things back in place. Nails and wires to hold it together.”

“Broken and dislocated?” He winced. “That’s rare in a kid. Must’ve been incredibly painful.”

“I don’t remember it,” I said, shrugging it off. “I also don’t like enclosed spaces.”

He scratched the back of his head, looking off to the side. “And here I thought you were a germaphobe.”

“I mean, I am. But the space is the primary culprit.”

He smiled then, eyes lighting up in that familiar way, so I knew I was amusing him, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Maybe I could do this. I could be both Olivia and Arden, and Bennett could accept past and present as one.

But then his face darkened, jaw tipped toward the window, to the invisible place where someone had just died. “You didn’t recognize him? At the store?” A tone of incredulity. Bennett, sifting through the facts, like the police would be doing somewhere else.

I shook my head. “It’s been twenty years.” To me, he remained that ageless photo in the papers. That single clip from his lone interview. He’d faded into the background after, an ancillary piece to the story. I could see the similarities, now that I was looking for them, underneath the passage of time. The deep-set eyes. The shape of his mouth. But in my mind, he was still so young.

Sean Coleman. To think he wasn’t much older than we were now when the media first shone its light on him. That he was thrust into the camera with the same speed at which he’d grabbed my wrist. What I’d remembered from his interview was that he was soft-spoken and tentative. Nothing like I’d remembered of the man in the store: Hey, I know you. So sure. So different from the soft-edged, shell-shocked face after the rescue.

Bennett paced the room slowly, scanning the surfaces he’d seen dozens of times before, like he was looking for something new. Something that might clue him in to a different person—one he’d never met.

“What were you seeing Dr. Cal for?” He wasn’t looking at me when he asked it, and the entire room suddenly changed.