Zoe had slept in pieces. 2 hours, then awake, then another stretch that didn't feel like real sleep, so much as her body going through the motions of it. She was at her desk by 7:00 with instant coffee that tasted like hot water with ambitions, reading back through her notebook. Dates, times, the sequence of everything that had happened since that first afternoon in the courtyard. She had four pages now, front and back, her handwriting getting smaller and more compressed as the pages filled.
At 7:48, someone knocked on her dorm room door. Not Avery. Avery was still asleep, her breathing slow and even from across the room. Zoe stood, crossed to the door, and opened it. Vera Latimer was not a tall woman, but she occupied space the way tall people do, with a kind of settled authority that had nothing to do with physical size and everything to do with having been exactly who she was for a very long time.
She was 58, with natural silver-streaked hair cut close, and a face that had seen enough to stop being surprised by most of it. She was Caldwell's women's athletics director, which meant she had an office in the building where decisions got made and a front row seat to exactly how those decisions were arrived at. She was holding two cups of coffee from the good place off campus. She extended one towards Zoe. "You look like you need this more than I do. " she said.
"Can I come in? " They sat at Zoe's desk and the small chair Avery used for video calls. The door closed, Avery still sleeping undisturbed 3 ft away. Latimore did not open with comfort. She did not tell Zoe it was going to be okay. What she offered instead was information delivered in the same direct unhurried way she apparently did everything.
"I've been watching the Walter family operate at this school for 11 years. " Latimore said. "What's happening to you right now is not new. The packaging changes. The target changes. The machinery underneath is always the same. " Zoe wrapped both hands around her coffee cup.
"Tell me what you know. " Latimore told her. Before Caldwell, Brody Walter had attended a private university in Tennessee for one semester. During that semester, a female student athlete had filed a formal complaint against him. Physical intimidation following a training incident that bore a striking resemblance to what had happened in Caldwell's recreation center. The complaint had not gone through the institution's normal process.
It had been intercepted early, handled through private attorneys, and resolved through a financial settlement that included a non-disclosure agreement. The record had been sealed. The woman who filed the complaint had left the school by the end of the semester. She had left competitive athletics entirely. Her name was Selena Dalton.