who asked whether I wanted to come over for dinner rather than eat alone. I accepted. We talked about the department, a local baseball game, and a mutual friend's new puppy until I realized we had gone nearly an hour without discussing Jade. That ordinary conversation was the first time I understood that a life could continue without every minute becoming a reaction to what had happened.
Still, the breakup had not finished unfolding. The financial arrangements were becoming clearer, but the part I had not expected was approaching through a different door. It began with a comment from somebody at the station about the gym where Remy worked. The man said the name casually, without knowing how much I had already heard it over the previous year.
Then he hesitated, studied my face, and asked whether I had a minute. I put down the inventory sheet and followed him to the quieter end of the apparatus bay. What he told me there changed the way I understood Jade's sudden belief that she had discovered the one person who could lead her into a better life. My colleague did not look pleased to be the person telling me. His name was Curtis, and he had the particular caution of somebody who understood how much damage rumors could do.
He said a relative of his had trained at Remy's gym for several years and that Remy's involvement with clients had been discussed there more than once. Curtis was careful to separate things he had heard directly from things other people had repeated. That distinction immediately made me trust the conversation more than I would have trusted a dramatic story delivered with certainty. He was not asking me to go confront anybody. He wanted me to know that the version of Remy I had seen in promotional videos might not be the whole picture.
He described a pattern involving at least three women over several years. Each had begun as a client, grown unusually close to Remy, and experienced a major disruption in her personal life as the relationship changed. One had ended a long-term relationship; another had left the gym abruptly after a falling-out; a third had complained that boundaries between coaching and personal involvement had become impossible to distinguish. Curtis did not know what the gym management had investigated or whether any formal complaints had been filed. He did know that Remy's name had repeatedly appeared in conversations that had nothing to do with training. I listened without interrupting, trying not to turn incomplete information into the story I most wanted to hear.
I asked whether Curtis had any reason to believe Jade was being harmed or pressured. He said he had no direct information about Jade beyond knowing she had been training with Remy. He also said Remy was married, though there were rumors that he and his wife had separated. I knew even less about that than he did.