Her new name is Hannah. Hannah Lichen. It sounds odd, and he can't really match that name with her face, but he'll get used to it. She writes. She loves it. She comes to Haven for inspiration for her new book and decides to stay for the Troubles. She can help with them in a hands-on way she's never been able to before, and she loves it. So she chooses to stay, like there was ever a choice. Like she could really stay any longer than some higher power, whatever makes her go away, wants her to.
He doesn't upset the balance. He doesn't tell her she's Audrey and Lucy and Sarah because, well, he's not sure why. He just doesn't.
She doesn't change his life so much this time. He wants her to. He's ready for her to. She has no reason to go to the police department when she's an author, and she thinks the police in this town are corrupt and don't want to help with the troubled or don't know, and he almost laughs because that's so not true. She still comes to him for information and likes him well enough, but they're never like they were before. She has new friends, ones in her own generation, but that doesn't stop him from being the one to tell her that their town needs a newspaper and he'll be happy to help out with it any way he can. She accepts; of course she does. She doesn't really have a choice.
Her hair is shorter and black and wavy. Her eyes are stormy, the kind of eyes that change with the seasons and always tend to look more like the color of whatever shirt she's wearing. It's hard to accept her as his Audrey, but she isn't, so that's okay.
She's an orphan, but she grew up in New York instead of Ohio and has the accent to match. She thinks Audrey is her mother and keeps referring to her as that. He doesn't even know how she finds out she's not, but one day she does and she talks to him.
"Why didn't you tell me I had past lives?" she questions accusingly.
"I wasn't sure how to bring it up," he answers, which is true enough, but it isn't the real reason. He should have told her; that's what Audrey would've wanted, but he feels like that's what's supposed to happen. It's certainly what happened all the other times. This time is no different. Last time is no different. Someday Audrey will be so far back she'll be forgotten by everyone, and then she'll truly have disappeared.
She lets it drop eventually, but she's angry with him. She avoids him until she doesn't.
"You know all this stuff about me that you're keeping to yourself!" she yells after finding out about Lucy and Sarah and what happened to Audrey when her driver was killed. She wants to know more, so he tells her about her son. He doesn't tell her that it's their son.
Eventually, she has to leave, too, and nothing could prepare him for the hole that left. He thought it would be easier this time, but it isn't. He watches Hannah walk into the barn and die like he watched Audrey do the same. It leaves him wanting more, even if she ignored him when she wasn't mad at him, and he can never tell her he loves her. He lost his chance decades ago.
He sees Duke again just before she leaves. Duke doesn't remember him and talks just like Howard does, and that's disturbing. He can't stop thinking about it. So now he's alone again for another 27 years, and he doesn't know how he'll survive this time. He's lost her three times, and it doesn't stop hurting. He saved himself for her, and nothing works out the way it should, not ever, and he hates that the world would abandon him yet again.