Chapter Twenty-One Ana
Chapter Twenty-One
Ana
Now
I’m driving back to Echo faster than I should, my head filled with the image of Dawn’s hands around Kayla’s throat, when I feel the car skid, glide, drift from the snow-covered highway onto the shoulder.
Then a jolt of adrenaline, foot off the gas.
My mind returns to the road, and the wheel, until the car is stopped, but then it goes where it wants—to these images from the past.
From Dawn’s hands around her throat, and Westin reinforcing the message, to the field, the trucker who attacked her. And then to Indy’s fantasy about killing Dawn with the heel of her blade. What Shannon had told me about Kayla, threatening her mother the exact same way. With her skate, her blade.
And the message I got in Aspen. The one that jolted me into the past, so hard I missed an entire session of the conference. Westin was right—I wasn’t there on the second day.
Kayla said she didn’t have any anger left toward Emile. She believed he’d sent her that article from a print newspaper, no return address so it could remain anonymous, letting her know that the man who’d assaulted her was dead. I left her house convinced of this truth. That she didn’t hate Emile.
Then she’d asked about me. Me and Emile. And I’d done what I’ve been doing for fourteen years.
I lied.
Shhhh. I can see Grace in the shadows. Now I can see myself when I was her age. In that dress. Keeping secrets.
I shouldn’t have allowed myself to deviate from my work. My mission.
Focus, Ana. Shhhh.
The evidence is strong, and we need a story by tomorrow. Something to tell the ADA.
This has to be about Grace, and nothing more. I sketch out the arguments again, looking for ways to refine them with the new information I have from Kayla.
First—Grace is innocent. Someone framed her.
Not someone from the past—but an angry skater or parent.
Dawn or Westin even. They had the most to lose.
Someone found her skates where she’d forgotten them in Dr. Westin’s office after a session.
And the dress—maybe another skater thought it was hers.
They all had one. Blue with yellow butterflies.
And we don’t know where Emile went after he picked up Grace.
He lived alone in a condo at the edge of town.
His neighbors couldn’t remember when they’d seen him last. Not exactly—leaving a three-day window for the murder.
It’s not our job to find the killer. But telling them this story about Dawn’s violence with Kayla will help. I can spin it so it’s Dawn, not Kayla, included among the suspects.
Second—there’s no motive for Grace to want Emile dead. Grace was angry at Tammy. She cried in Shannon’s arms, then asked for Emile. Maybe she wanted an explanation for what she’d heard—about his departure. His betrayal of Dawn. It’s weak.
Third—they could have something we don’t know about. A piece of evidence they haven’t disclosed. They have no obligation until she’s officially charged. So—I consider again the other line of defense. The so-called excuses.
Most of my clients are guilty. It doesn’t change my commitment.
My compassion for them. They are children—damaged children—and we owe them a better path forward.
A chance to heal. This is what I’m known for.
I can hear the argument inside my head. Grace was traumatized. Not responsible for her actions.
A thought emerges as I sit in the car, parked against the wall of snow covering the shoulder.
I grab the file on the passenger seat—Grace’s records.
From doctors and her schools. The ones Jolene had to submit to apply to board at Avery Hall.
I look through them and see what I expected.
Straight A’s. Glowing comments from her teachers.
Routine checkups and some physical therapy for a strained hamstring. All normal.
I get to the older ones—the records from Grace’s home in Oklahoma—and see more of the same. I hear the words I’ll need to say. This perfect child was terrorized by Dawn Sumner. Taught to channel that fear to rage. Her young brain conditioned to fight. Dawn and Dr. Westin. The mindfucker.
My phone sits on the console, and I hear the familiar ringtone from my office.
“Jill?” I ask, picking it up, putting it on speaker. I can barely hear her with the whipping wind whistling through the seams of the windows.
“Are you okay?”
I answer, “Yeah—there’s a huge storm. I’m on the road.”
“Goddamned Colorado,” she says. Jill hates the cold—and she knows my history here. At least the parts I’ve been willing to share.
Her sigh is loud and distinct, and the familiarity of it reaches inside and makes me shudder.
“No luck with the girl’s story?” she asks.
“I’m working on it,” I tell her. “Anything on your end?”
I asked Jill to look into The Palace, Dawn, Emile, Avery Hall. Even Jolene. I can’t presume to still know her, especially when she sent her daughter here to train. Our memories are so different.
“It’s true about Emile Dresiér’s position in California,” Jill says matter-of-factly. “I had the intern call the rink in San Diego and ask about trying out for him. They told her he was supposed to start this summer, but—didn’t she know? That he’d been murdered?”
Jill lets out a little laugh, like she’s pleased with her resourcefulness.
“There’s something else.”
I clutch the file, bracing myself as Jill tells me about the calls she made to her news sources.
“Emile was shopping a story—insider stuff about the training methods at The Palace.”
I feel my pulse quicken. “What kind of stuff?”
“Something called Fear Training. I mean—what the fuck goes on in that place?”
“Christ.”
“What?” Jill asks, her voice growing concerned.
“That’s what we called it,” I tell her. “When I was a skater.”
Suddenly, I don’t like where this is going.
“Well,” she says. “My source wasn’t the one he approached, so her intel was spotty. But she said it wasn’t just now—it went back to an injury he had, the one that ended his career or something.”
The quad toe. The twisted knee.
“Okay, yeah . . .” I say. All that is true. I feel a burst of relief—maybe Emile was telling his story. Not ours. But then, Jill continues.
“And something about a girl—with a terrible bruise.”
No, I think. Indy Cunningham.
“Does that ring any bells?”
A moment passes before I answer.
“She was a skater—when I was here.”
If he was talking to them about Indy, what else has he told them? About Jolene and Hugo? About Kayla and the trucker? The one who turned up dead years later?
About me?
Jill continues, unaware of the panic coursing through my body. I hold a hand over my mouth so she can’t hear the breath that heaves in and out.
“My source said Emile wasn’t just giving them a fluff piece to justify why he was leaving The Palace. He was trying to burn it to the ground. Apparently with things that happened a long time ago,” she says.
Things that happened to us. The Orphans.
“The list of suspects besides Grace is spectacular!” Jill says, excited now about the case.
“Anyone from the past with a secret they didn’t want told—and anyone with something to lose if Emile’s exposé ran.
That should buy you some time until the girl sorts out her bullshit story.
My gut says she’s covering for someone.”
I think about Grace waiting for me back at the condo. Her words last night.
It’s not safe here.
It’s all your fault.
“Ana?”
“I’m here. Sorry—yeah,” I tell her. “I’ll talk to her again—tell her about the article.”
Jill’s voice grows concerned. “Hey—listen—I know this can’t be easy. I know you hated it there.”
She has no idea. I’ve shared little of my past with her. With anyone in my life.
“I’m okay.”
“Take care of yourself—right? Focus on the client. That always helps you.”
“I will,” I promise her, though I feel like a different version of myself. Not the one she knows, but the one who never really left Colorado.
No—that can’t be true. I did leave. I moved on. All of this is behind me.
The call ends, but I stay right here, staring over the headlights.
My instincts feel disorganized, triggered by the past and the thought of what Emile has disclosed.
A wave of heat flushes my body, and I roll down the window, desperate for cold air. The snow pricks my skin, and my eyes water, but I don’t care.
We all heard Indy tell that story. And now Emile has been killed with the heel of a blade.
And now—oh God. A memory rushes in, and I wonder—did Dawn know about that story? About Kayla and the way she raised her skate in the air when she was lashing out at the mothers in the stands?
Yes—God, yes. Dawn knew, I realize as the memory plays.
I was so desperate to help Indy. She couldn’t stop falling.
Everyone had failed her. Her mother. Dr. Westin, who told her it was all in her head.
Self-sabotage. He told her to fight the fear and get the height, the rotation, the landing.
Once she retrained her brain, she would stop hesitating on the takeoff. He told her to read the book.
Yes, yes.
And then what?
It comes back now in one flood, one punch to the gut.
Dinners at her house. She would pick me up on the corner so no one would see us.
Her car smelled of leather and perfume. She played classical music.
She hummed along to it. And then the table—always set with linen place mats and fine crystal.
She said it was important to appreciate the finer things in life.
And that one night, when I was quiet, searching for courage.
“What’s wrong?” Dawn asked me. “I can always tell with you.”
I felt my mouth go dry and my lips tremble, but I got the words out. About Indy’s bruise from the falls and “I think she needs help.”
She smiled, rose from her chair. Left the room. And I followed her.
Into the front hall where she kept her bag. Inside was a notebook where she recorded her lessons. Good girl. Bad girl. Her beige skates with the gold blades.