A couple of weeks earlier, she had mentioned gaining a little weight during the off-season.
“I just want to feel lighter when I’m back on the ice,” she had told me. “At state, every little thing shows.”
“You look perfect,” I had reassured her.
Mike had walked by just in time to hear that. “Nothing wrong with tightening things up before competition,” he added. “It’s part of the sport.”
At the time, I didn’t question it. It sounded reasonable… even supportive.
But over the next two weeks, Lily began to change — slowly at first, in ways that were easy to dismiss.
Then not so easy.
She grew quieter. The color drained from her cheeks. Her energy faded.
One day, she rushed down the stairs and suddenly grabbed the railing, as if the world had tilted beneath her.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded too quickly. “Yeah. Just dizzy. Got up too fast.”
I started to wonder if she had switched to looser clothing… or if her clothes were simply hanging off her now.
After that, I couldn’t stop noticing things.
More than once, I caught Mike watching her — not casually, but with a quiet, focused concern. As though he already knew something was wrong.
But what unsettled me most were the closed-door conversations.
Mike would call Lily into the study, or she would go in after practice and shut the door behind her. They would stay there for fifteen, sometimes thirty minutes at a time.
Every time I asked, Mike had an answer ready.
“Training schedule.”
“Competition strategy.”
“Mental prep.”
One evening, I opened the study door without knocking.
Mike was standing directly in front of Lily, his hands gripping her upper arms.
They both turned sharply when I walked in. Silence fell instantly.
Mike stepped back right away.
“Everything okay?” I asked, looking between them.
“Yeah,” Lily said, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Of course,” Mike added with a shrug.
But the feeling wouldn’t leave me — that I had interrupted something they didn’t want me to see.
That was when the fear truly settled in.
A few days later, Lily’s coach pulled me aside at the rink.
He was not the kind of man to exaggerate, which made his concern even more serious.
“Lily looks run down,” he said. “I know she’s training hard, but I’m worried. She’s getting dizzy between runs. Her recovery is slower. She seems weak.”
I looked through the glass at the ice. Lily stood near the boards, tugging at her sleeves, her face pale under the bright lights.
“Has she been sick?” he asked.
I thought about her dizziness. “I… don’t know.”
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