Blade

Chapter Thirty Ana

Chapter Thirty

Ana

Now

Jolene and I stand side by side as images of that night emerge and begin to play. It’s all right there. Her father in the doorway, hitting me. Slapping her. Then her mother. Packing her clothes.

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me sooner. This thread about Grace. I read the rest of the papers in her file—the reports from her first year of school. There are cycles of abuse within families. Violence can spread like a virus from one generation to the next.

She sees the questions on my face.

Did it spread to Grace? And is she now capable of murder?

“I did the best I could after that night,” Jolene says.

I don’t doubt this. Every parent I’ve seen—they all had good intentions.

“What happened after that night, Jo? I need to know—it could help Grace.”

I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake the story loose. Was Grace raised in the shadow of abuse? Was she abused herself, by her grandfather? Is that what I saw on her face in that video?

Jolene turns from me and walks to the window. There’s nothing to see but complete whiteout as she places both of her palms against the glass. Like she’s looking into a snow globe. Or maybe looking out, trapped inside.

“I did what my mother did,” she continues. “I saved her with skating, Ana. I know I did!”

Maybe it was already too late.

“What happened in kindergarten—the evaluation—do you think it could still be inside her? Enough rage to kill someone?”

These words sound crazy as they now sit between us. The child conceived sixteen years ago now a part of that story. Our story. Emile’s murder a new chapter.

Her face quivers. She wants to say no, but she can’t. I’ve been here before. It’s devastating to see what your own child might be capable of.

She looks at me with pleading eyes. “Do you?” she asks.

Yes.

The answer is part of my bible as a lawyer for violent children.

Years of exposure to unpredictable rage can damage a child.

Wire their brains to be hypervigilant. To always anticipate danger.

Be prepared to fight at any moment. It can interrupt the development of empathy—and lack of empathy is the defining trait of sociopathic illness.

There is so much controversy over the ability to rehabilitate.

To fix the wires that were laid down in the early years.

Yes, I think. It could still be inside her.

But what matters now is that we keep Grace from getting charged with this crime.

“We have to explain why she asked to see Emile after that fight with Tammy Theisen,” I tell her. “That’s the missing piece to this puzzle.”

Jolene shakes her head. “Fucking Emile. He sent me to that clinic knowing they would turn me away. Giving my father enough time to get here.”

“Oh my God!” I say, having a sudden thought sparked by the memories of the day we went to the clinic.

“Shannon Finch told me that she heard Tammy say something to Grace after the fight. When the video had stopped. She told Grace to ask Emile. That he knew the truth.” I try to explain where this thought has taken me.

“We’ve been assuming it was about Emile’s move to California—but what if it wasn’t? ”

Jolene’s eyes light up. “The clinic!” she says. “Tammy knew—that’s what she must have told Grace. That I tried to terminate the pregnancy . . . oh God!”

“How would Tammy Theisen know about that?” I ask. “I never told anyone.”

Jolene rises from the couch and begins to pace the room. “Neither did I,” she says. “It was just you, me, and Emile.”

Then, suddenly, I have the answer.

“Shannon Finch,” I tell her. “It was Mrs. Finch who knew about Kayla—when we took her to the clinic after the rape. That’s why she attacked her in the bleachers that day—Shannon told me and Artis the whole story.

If Shannon and her mother knew about Kayla, she could have known that you went there too.

I don’t know how, but that has to be it. ”

Jolene stops walking. Her face streaks red, and her eyes become wide and dark.

“How could she do that? She’s a grown woman now—and Grace has been living with her all this time!”

“Don’t think about that,” I say, taking her hand. “This is it! This is why Grace isn’t talking to you. We can use this to get through to her . . .”

I’m about to tell Jolene the things we can say to get Grace to trust her, to trust me.

But then we feel a gust of cold air sweep through the room. And hear the front door slam shut.

Jolene and I run from the living room to the foyer, where the air lingers, spilling specks of fresh snow on the carpet.

“Grace?” Jolene calls out. She leads the way upstairs to the two bedrooms. Both doors are open now. Both rooms are empty.

Jolene is already back in the hallway, yelling her name louder. “Grace!”

“She wouldn’t go out in this storm,” I say.

But Jolene looks through the coats that hang on the wall.

“It’s gone,” she says. “Her coat is missing.”

I open the door, and we both look outside.

“There!” I point to deep footprints on the landing, leading down the three steps to the parking lot.

Grace is gone.

Jolene reaches for her boots, about to run out into the storm. I grab her arm and pull her back.

“Wait,” I plead with her. “The ankle bracelet will set off a chain of calls—to the DA’s office first, to Artis next. He’ll be able to track her.”

I pull out my phone and dial Artis’s number. Jolene watches with wide eyes that dart from me to the footprints in the snow.

Artis answers. It sounds like he’s in the car. “Where are you?” I ask him. He said he was going to see Dawn, then head home. That was hours ago.

“Tracking down loose ends,” he says. “What’s going on?”

I tell him what’s happened—Grace has left the condo. Gone out into the storm.

“I’ll call the monitoring station,” he says. “I’ll get her as soon as I have the location.”

I assure Jolene that Artis will find her, but she shakes her head. “I need to go!”

She’s exhausted from lack of sleep and worry. Not thinking straight. I grab hold of her shoulders.

“Jo—please. Stay here in case she comes back,” I plead with her, but I can see this isn’t enough.

“I’ll go look for her, okay? I’ll go.”

I slip on my boots and coat while Jolene watches.

I take her in my arms and squeeze with all my might.

“Find her, Ana. Promise me . . .”

So I do. I promise her and rush off, wondering why Grace is running.

When I step outside, the wind rushes, pushing against me. I lean into it, headfirst, thinking about where she might go. Her words filling my head.

“It’s not safe here . . .”

I find the footprints, one set, quickly disappearing.

They head through an opening between two condo units, and I follow them, walking where she’s walked before I lose her trail.

The snow rises from the ground and covers everything now, the parking lot, the cars, the pavement.

It flies through the air on swirls of shifting wind, and I stop to zip my coat and lace my boots.

I can’t see more than a few yards in any direction.

I follow the steps, lifting each foot from the imprint, the deep holes they’ve carved, then into the next one. Left, then right. Left, then right. Following her tracks as the cold whips across my face, burning my skin.

The footprints lead to the access road, the one that snakes up the mountain. A plow has just come through. It’s carved a tunnel, which I step into and continue walking, following the trail.

My phone pings, and I take it out, pull off a glove to touch the screen, but my fingers are too cold. I lift it to my face, and it opens, revealing a message from Westin.

I just heard about Grace—let me know when you find her . . . be careful. It’s not safe in the storm.

Artis must have called him, and I remind myself that Artis knows nothing about the exposé. Or the report about Grace from years ago.

The air is cold when it hits my lungs. I let it out slowly, slipping the phone into my pocket.

The wind quiets to near silence, the kind that comes after a storm leaves, when the ground is covered, and there’s not a car or truck for miles.

And in this strange silence I hear my body, heart beating, blood flowing.

I hear Jolene crying in my arms, begging me to find Grace.

I see her on the floor of the Orphans’ room at Avery Hall.

Cowering beneath her father. Her mother yelling about the baby inside her.

Kayla in the woods. In Emile’s bed. In his bathtub while he washes her. The memories are wired. A string of lights, like the cars that move along the highway at night.

I shake off the snow, pulse pounding in my ears, as I walk this familiar road. Step by step.

Left, then right. Left, then right.

I walk this road I know by heart, even in the blinding snow, up the incline, the hill that becomes the mountain.

Then I reach the entrance to the place I swore I would never return to. That I’d put behind me.

The Palace logo, with the circle and the pine trees, the stencil of a skater in a layback spin. The parking lot toward the side door, the one that opens to the snack bar.

Get inside, I hear myself think. I hurry across the lot, reach for the handle, and pull, the same way I’ve done hundreds of times, but so long ago. The door sticks and releases, just like it used to. My body remembers. My fingers know exactly how hard to grip the metal.

I walk in, let the door slam behind me, closing out the storm.

The place is empty and dark, but it smells of fried food, so I think they must have been open.

Neon lights buzz from behind the counter, a sign that says Smoothie, which wasn’t here fourteen years ago but now provides enough light to see the shape of things.

The benches in the back. The wooden tables.

The rubber mats beneath my feet. I shake off the snow and search for the opening to the rink on the other side of the counter.

Images appear now, of walking through that opening, the mothers sitting in the stands to the right, the doors to the boards that gave access to the ice, here and again around the corner, at the south end where the locker rooms were, and my locker in the third row, and the bench where I would sit and lace my skates, the nylon cutting into my fingers.

And farther around to the other side, the hallway and the offices in the back. Dawn’s, and the room where Dr. Westin met with the skaters. With us.

These images provoke visceral reactions that explode inside me, the same way they did last night when I looked out the window and saw the four lights on each corner of this place.

And when I sat with Grace and studied her.

When I looked at the photos of blood pooling in the snow, the four gashes in Emile’s head.

And today when I walked inside Dawn’s house.

Don’t think. Just move.

I pass through the opening to the rink, where the smell hits me hard. Ammonia, minerals, gasoline, rubber. The sweat of the skaters that leaves their bodies and hangs in the air.

I close my eyes and inhale three long breaths and focus on conscious thoughts to remind myself that I’m me, Ana, now, at thirty.

Not thirteen. Not fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.

Not a child. My heart slows. Then a door slams from the other side of the ice, and I open my eyes to a brighter light, coming from across the rink to the hallway that leads to the offices.

Cautiously, I move toward the light, along the edge of the boards to the hallway that leads to the locker rooms, then up two levels, crossing through the seats to the opening on the other side.

Don’t think. Just move.

I walk down the passageway that leads to Dawn’s office, and I stop at the open door and look inside. I can smell her from where I am, the perfume and cheap cosmetics that linger in the dark, empty room. It pulls me like a siren, just like it did earlier at her house, and more memories flood in.

“Emile is joining us for dinner.”

“I am what you should fear.”

“What do you need, Ana?”

My cheek pressed against her body and that fucking blue puffer coat.

Her desk is meticulously organized. Stacks of papers in black wire organizers.

Matching cups to hold pens. Slowly, I walk around the desk to her chair and the sweater that’s folded over the back.

She always wore one when she worked here.

When she called us in to tell us something good. Something bad. We never knew.

And then I see her skates resting against the far wall. The beige leather with the gold blades. I remember—the edge pressed against my neck, my temple.

I walk toward them, these relics from my past, but just as I reach the wall, I hear a whimper coming from the office next door. From Dr. Westin’s room.

“Grace?”

I step into the hall, then to the room next door.

Where I find Grace, standing in the shadows.

“Grace,” I whisper. Her body shakes as she sobs, and I move toward her, slowly, not making a sound, until I’m there and reach out to take her in my arms. But she shoves me, hard, and I fall to the ground.

“Stay away from me!” she screams.

Soaking wet from melted snow, shivering in the clothes she was wearing before, beneath an open coat and unlaced boots, she braces for a fight.

On her face is the same rage I saw in that video.