Reborn Through The Ashes

Chapter five

Hannah didn't sleep that night. She lay in bed with her phone clutched in her hand, the two messages glowing on the screen like open wounds she couldn't stop touching. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the truck's headlights again, felt the heat of flames licking closer, and heard Nathan's voice promising he'd come back. The memories didn't fade the way memories were supposed to. If anything, they sharpened with every hour that passed, as if her body remembered a death her mind refused to let go of.

By morning, she had made a decision. If Nathan had received a message too, I know what you did to her, then whoever was sending these texts knew things about both of them. Things that shouldn't exist yet, in a timeline where nothing bad had happened at all.

She found him in the study, sitting behind the desk with his tie loosened and dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn't slept either. He looked up when she entered, surprise flickering across his face before he could hide it.

"Hannah." He straightened in his chair. "I didn't expect to see you today. Not after yesterday."

"I need to ask you something," she said, closing the door behind her. "And I need you to be honest with me."

She braced herself, half expecting the performance she knew so well from three years of marriage: the practiced concern, the gentle deflection, the way he could turn any accusation back into her own insecurity. She was ready for him to lie.

He didn't.

"The message you got yesterday." Hannah kept her voice steady, though her heart was pounding. "I know what you did to her. Have you gotten anything since then?"

Nathan's jaw tightened. He didn't answer right away, and that hesitation told her everything before he even opened his mouth.

"Yes," he finally admitted. "Three more, actually. Since last night."

Hannah's stomach twisted. "Three?"

"I didn't want to bring it to you. Not after everything that happened yesterday. I figured you'd think I was making excuses, trying to win back your sympathy." He gave a short, humorless laugh. "I suppose that would've been fair, given how things ended between us."

"What did they say?"

He hesitated, then reached into his desk drawer and pulled out his phone, sliding it across the desk toward her without a word. Hannah picked it up, scrolling through the thread with a growing sense of dread.

You think you got away with it.

She trusted you. Both of them did.

The truth doesn't stay buried forever, Nathan.

Hannah's hands went cold. "Who is this?"

"I don't know," Nathan said, and for the first time since she'd woken up in this life, she believed him completely. "I've been trying to figure it out all night."

Hannah set the phone down slowly, her mind racing. "It's not just that they know things. It's when they know them." She looked up at him. "Nathan, none of this has happened yet. Not in this life. You didn't leave me in a burning car. I didn't die. So how does someone already know enough to threaten us both?"

Nathan didn't answer immediately. He rubbed a hand over his jaw, and for a moment Hannah saw something flicker behind his eyes, not confusion, but calculation, like he was deciding how much to say.

"There's something you should know," he said slowly. "About Lydia."

Hannah went still. "What about her?"

"Before you and I got engaged, before I even really knew you, Lydia came to me. She told me she was worried about you. Said you'd been struggling since your father died, that you latched onto people too easily, that you'd probably fall for the first man who paid you any real attention." He paused. "She was the one who introduced us, Hannah. She practically arranged it."

Hannah's blood went cold. "She never told me that."

"I didn't think much of it at the time. I thought she was just looking out for you." Nathan's expression darkened. "But looking back now, knowing what I know about the messages, about how careful she's always been around certain topics, I don't think it was concern at all. I think she was choosing who you'd fall in love with."

Hannah's mind spun, pieces rearranging themselves into a shape she hadn't let herself consider before. She had always believed Lydia's betrayal began with jealousy, a slow, creeping resentment that curdled into obsession over the years. But if Lydia had engineered the relationship from the very beginning, orchestrated the exact moment Hannah met Nathan, then this was never about falling in love with him. This was a plan from the start.

She thought back to countless small moments over the years: dinners Lydia had somehow always been invited to, trips where she'd conveniently been the one to book the rooms, the way she always seemed to know exactly what Nathan wanted before he said it out loud. Hannah had mistaken all of it for closeness, for family. She had never once considered it might be a strategy.

"Why would she do that?" Hannah whispered. "Just to take my place eventually? That's years of planning, Nathan. Years."

"I don't know," Nathan admitted. "But I don't think jealousy explains it. Not something this deliberate."

Before Hannah could press further, before she could ask the dozen other questions crowding her throat, the study door burst open.

Lydia stood in the doorway, breathless, her face pale as paper, her eyes darting between the two of them with something close to panic.

"You need to come outside," she said, her voice trembling. "Both of you. Now."

"Lydia, what's wrong?" Nathan was already on his feet.

"There's someone here." Lydia's hands twisted together in front of her, knuckles white. "He's asking for Nathan. He won't leave."

"Who is it?" Hannah asked, rising from her chair, something cold settling low in her stomach.

Lydia hesitated, her eyes flicking toward Hannah and then away again, as if she couldn't bear to hold her gaze.

"He says he knows what happened to your father."

Hannah froze.

Her father's death had always been ruled natural, a heart condition no one had caught in time, the doctors had said, nothing anyone could have prevented. She had grieved him for years without ever once questioning the story. It had simply been true, the way the sky was blue, the way water was wet.

"That's not possible," Hannah said, but her voice wavered even as she said it.

Lydia's eyes filled with tears, her composure cracking in a way Hannah had never witnessed in three years of marriage.

"And he says," Lydia's voice broke. She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth before forcing the words out. "He says your death will happen again."

The room seemed to tilt beneath Hannah's feet. She gripped the edge of the desk to steady herself, her pulse roaring in her ears.

"Show me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Show me who he is."

Lydia led them down the hallway on unsteady legs, Nathan close behind Hannah, his hand hovering near her back as if he expected her to collapse. They reached the front door, and Lydia pulled it open with a shaking hand.

A man stood on the porch, silhouetted against the gray morning light, his coat collar turned up against the wind. He was older, his face weathered, his eyes sharp despite the lines carved deep around them. He carried himself with a stillness that unsettled her more than any raised voice could have, the stillness of someone who had waited a very long time for this exact moment.

Hannah's breath caught in her throat the moment she saw him.

She knew that face.

She had seen it once before, three years from now, through shattered glass and smoke and rain, in the last chaotic seconds before the flames swallowed everything. He had been standing at the edge of the highway that night, watching the wreckage burn, close enough to help and never moving an inch closer. She remembered thinking, in the fog of pain and fear, that he looked less like a bystander and more like someone confirming a job had been finished.

He had been there. At the accident that killed her.

And now he was standing on her doorstep, three years before it happened, looking directly at her with an expression that wasn't surprising. It was recognition.

Hannah's legs threatened to give out beneath her. Nathan's hand found her elbow, steadying her without a word, and even Lydia had gone completely silent beside them, her earlier tears frozen somewhere behind wide, terrified eyes.

"Who are you?" Hannah managed, though her voice came out smaller than she intended.

The man's gaze didn't waver from hers. Something almost like sympathy passed across his weathered face, or perhaps it was simply satisfaction, the look of a man watching a piece finally fall into place after years of waiting.

"Hello, Hannah," he said quietly, before anyone else could speak. "You're not supposed to remember me yet."