Chapter Twelve Ana
Chapter Twelve
Ana
Now
Downstairs, I find Westin gone and Artis waiting for me by the door. He’s slipped on his boots and tucked the pant legs of his suit inside them. The fake fur on the collar of his parka frames his face. The rest of it seems to swallow him whole.
“Did you see Grace upstairs?” Artis asks.
I shake my head. “Let’s just go.”
The dark clouds are here now, along with the wind that tears right through my coat and sweater, to my skin and into my bones as I walk from the front door to the parking lot.
I shiver as I climb into Artis’s SUV.
“You got soft in New York,” he says with a smile.
We take the long way to Avery Hall so we can drive by the field. The scene of the crime. I want to look at the layout again, the proximity to the dorm and The Palace. And, also, the highway that runs along the other side.
With the town hunkered down for the storm, the roads are deserted.
“Does Shannon know we’re coming?” I ask Artis.
“Yeah,” he says. “She remembered you right away. You skated here at the same time.”
My entire body recoils—not at the thought of Shannon, but at her mother and the other bleacher bees who tormented us.
I remember how they would sit in the stands above the snack bar.
The lessons I had to learn about them. How their words turned to knives.
How they were always looking for ways to hurt us, undermine us, come between us.
Anything that would weaken us so their daughters would have an advantage, especially over Indy.
“A lot of skaters are still here,” he adds. “It’s a cool town.”
I nod, thinking it has nothing to do with Echo. They couldn’t let go of this world and now cling to it for dear life. But what do I know? Maybe they’re happy here, hiking and fly-fishing.
Artis turns off the engine. “Looks like they’ve removed the police tape,” he says, pointing to the field. “The body was found just beyond the tree line.”
I let myself see it now. Really see it, the way it was.
The field. The cheap beer in plastic cups, spilling on my hands.
Wiping them on my jeans, or the dead weeds.
Pot smoke. Fires burning. Music playing.
Cars and kids. Finding a place to pee behind a tree, girls laughing, standing guard on wobbly legs.
“What goes on here now?” I ask.
Artis shrugs. “Same as before—small-scale stuff. Kids coming to score, drink, make out in cars. There’s still that truck stop about a quarter mile up the highway, so we get some riffraff from that.”
“Is that a possibility, then?” I ask, wondering. “That Emile was killed by a stranger—a trucker maybe—or maybe he was involved in something, like drugs?”
“That doesn’t explain the blood on her skate. And I’d bet good money Grace came here to party like we did, which means she knew her way around.”
His smile fades as he looks from me to the window, out to the field.
“But why would she come here with Emile? In the middle of winter?”
This doesn’t make sense to me.
A gust of wind rocks the car as Artis turns the ignition. “We should get moving,” he says, making a U-turn to head back to the access road.
The car moves, and the field disappears, and I look ahead to the storm clouds and the deserted road.
Artis draws a long breath and holds it, like he’s not sure how to say something.
“Westin’s kinda odd, right? Or is it just me?”
I don’t know how much to tell Artis about Westin. I remember Grace with her finger to her lips. The whisper, shhhh. Why she didn’t want me to answer his question about her mother. And why Westin brought up the conference in Aspen.
“Did you know about his name being on the new edition of Dawn’s book? His whole life is tied up in this.”
“When you say this, do you mean Dawn?”
“Dawn, The Palace, the training,” I say, pondering the possibilities. “The point is, Westin has an interest in protecting the program. And that could be at odds with helping Grace.”
“You think Westin is involved somehow?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.
I can tell he doesn’t agree. “I think anything that hurts The Palace hurts him, and I don’t see a way around it. If Grace knows something about the murder that implicates another skater or parent—or even something about Emile—that would damage the program.”
Artis sighs. “Look—that applies to pretty much everyone in this town. It wouldn’t survive without the skating center. I sure as hell wouldn’t be here,” he says.
“Okay, then,” I say. “That’s our first line of defense—Grace is being framed. And it could be anyone—even a stranger. That will buy us time.”
“And if the evidence keeps pointing her way?”
I shrug. “You’ve read my cases. You know how I operate.”
I see the skepticism on his face. I’ve seen it before. Not everyone believes in trauma psychology. “You disagree with the defenses I use?” I ask him.
“Nope,” he says. “Look—I’ll argue whatever the fuck I can to get my client off. Even the guilty ones.”
At the first stop sign, Artis makes a right-hand turn, then drives past The Palace—too fast for my mind to orient itself, to linger. Next, we’re at the short driveway that leads to the rectangular beige building.
I can hear my mother’s words now, something about the landscaping and dormers.
She didn’t want to leave me in a place that looked like this.
A beige box. An older woman in an apron, too tired to climb the stairs.
And the other Orphans luring me away and down the hall.
Pulling me into their fold. The family that would replace her, and my father and brother.
Stand-ins that would have to do because she didn’t want me to see her illness progress. Or the side effects of the treatments.
Artis turns into the empty driveway and parks the car. He gets out like this is nothing, to him or to me. Like these memories aren’t quicksand.
I follow him silently, up the stone steps with the metal rail, to the front door. It’s open, and he walks right in, with me close behind.
It’s the smell that gets me first, drags me back in time.
I can’t pin it exactly. Industrial cleaning products.
The distinct must old houses take on and can’t shake.
The decor has changed. Beige paint on the walls, and wood floors replacing flowered wallpaper and pale linoleum.
But the smell lives deeper than that. Too deep to be stripped away by the redecorating or the Christmas tree in the TV room, still flickering with colored lights and ornaments.
Artis keeps moving to the door on the right. The apartment where Edie used to live, which is now inhabited by Shannon Finch.
He appears steeped in anticipation as he knocks, his parka rising and falling with his breath.
And I fight to catch mine. Everywhere, I see the ghosts.
Kayla. Jolene. Indy. Mio. Dressed in leggings and sneakers, hair pulled into ponytails and buns.
And back up the stairs at the end of the hallway, to my room on the left, and the Orphans at the end.
And the bathroom across the hall—which brings a smile as I remember caking on makeup, Kayla with her Jack Daniel’s, teasing us.
But then other things creep from my mind, where they’ve been hiding, and I stop before I sink deeper.
Thank God the door opens, and a woman stands before us.
Shannon Finch.
She looks surprised when she sees me, not because she didn’t expect us. But maybe because I’m nothing like the girl she knew fourteen years ago.
“Ana Robbins!” she says, moving toward me with open arms, pulling me into a halfhearted squeeze.
“Shannon . . .” I say, not wanting to finish the thought that sits on my tongue. You’re still here.
She looks exactly the same to me. Corkscrew curls. Round face. Petite body, only now with curves and some extra weight.
“I know,” she says, answering the question I didn’t ask. “Weird, right? But I always loved it here. Even after I quit skating and moved back to Oregon.” Then she shrugs like this is somehow inexplicable, her inability to move on.
“Come in,” she says, leading us past a small foyer with a desk and an actual phone, a landline, to a small living area in the back.
In my three years at Avery Hall, I never entered this space. Edie kept it locked, with the key attached to a coiled chain that hung from her neck so she wouldn’t lose it. So we couldn’t get our hands on it. As if we’d ever want to.
We sit on stiff sofas, like the ones at the condo. Take off our coats and lay them beside us. I hear cartoons playing through the walls from another room. There’s a LEGO set on the floor in the corner. I don’t ask questions about her personal life. I don’t want to answer any about mine.
“It’s so awful about Grace,” she says. “And Emile. I can’t believe he’s gone.”
Artis bows his head in reverence to Emile’s tragic passing, though something about it feels contrived. A lawyer down to his bones.
Shannon appears unfazed. Maybe even excited by the drama this has created, and that she’s now a part of it.
“What are they saying?” she asks.
Artis launches in about the meeting tomorrow with the ADA, and how Grace still claims that she didn’t kill Emile in the field.
He runs through the timeline—the one that’s in the file. Emile picked up Grace after her fight with Tammy Theisen. Dawn was still at the rink—witnesses place her there through early evening.
Grace returned in time for dinner that night, having changed out of her dress. Her skates were back at the rink, in her locker, though she claims she accidentally left them in Westin’s office after her session.
Emile didn’t show up for training the next day, and his body was found three days later by a local resident walking his three black labs in the field.
There had been snow, then freezing rain in the days leading up to the discovery.
Emile’s body and the pool of blood were frozen, discovered by the dogs after they were let off their leash.