Blade

Chapter Forty-Seven Ana

Chapter Forty-Seven

Ana

Now

I returned to Echo ten months later, for the trial of Shannon Finch in the murder of Emile Dresiér. It was there that my secret was finally revealed.

I had gone through my life as if that night had never happened.

I’d had no idea about the dress, and the lengths to which Dawn would go to protect me.

Emile, as well, because he’d read about the body being found, the cause of death.

Shannon had told him about the dress, and how she’d given it to Dawn.

He’d held the secret until it was time to finally make a move against The Palace.

As for Shannon—I don’t know why she gave the dress to Dawn and not the police. Or why she didn’t tell anyone when she and Artis finally put the pieces together.

I don’t take any of this as a sign of affection for me. They all had reasons that served themselves. For Dawn, Jeb Clayton’s murder was the end of a story she didn’t want told.

And what does that say about me? That I felt no remorse?

I feel none now, almost fifteen years later.

Maybe from the years of therapy, though I never told any of the shrinks what I’d done.

Or from my work, coming to understand trauma responses in children.

Defending children who have committed heinous crimes. Maybe because he deserved it.

I thought about this when I was questioned by the same ADA who prosecuted Shannon Finch.

When I told her about that night when I was fifteen.

Having so recently lost my mother. Having just learned that my best friend had died of an overdose, drinking a strange concoction of DMSO and morphine mixed by a veterinarian.

The liquid I’d hid for her in a shampoo bottle so she could take it with her to Nationals, and that had made her smell of garlic.

And numbed the bruise she got from falling.

It sounds absurd, now that I’m so removed from this place.

But at the time, Indy landing the triple Axel was bigger than any of us.

I told her about the man who gave me a ride after finding me alone and scared at the truck stop, and how I thought I might be safe, but then I smelled the pine and saw the necklace as he leaned over to grab my hair. Asked me if I liked to party.

I could not have told it any better, or painted a clearer picture. I was acting in self-defense from this man who chased me after I ran away, this man with a rape conviction and multiple reports by his former wife for domestic violence.

I told the story like the lawyer I am now, and not the girl I was then—and I got her off. No charges were filed.

The story I told was true. Except, maybe, when she asked the final question—about the four puncture wounds to his skull and how hard it must have been to extract the blade and plunge it back three more times.

What was going through my mind? What was in my heart?

Why didn’t I strike once, then try to run away?

“Did you want to kill him?” she asked.

As a killer with an excellent attorney, I said, “No. Of course not.”

The four puncture wounds to Emile’s skull were used to convict Shannon of first-degree murder and Artis of conspiracy after the fact. They built a compelling narrative.

The family court had ruled in Emile’s favor days before Shannon killed him. She’d filed an appeal. But then she had a better idea.

She knew Jolene was in town for the holidays. She knew Kayla lived an hour away.

And she knew about the conference I was speaking at in Aspen. Artis had told her—he followed my career.

When they searched her apartment, they found the burner phone with the text message—the one with an emoji of a skating blade.

That message had sent me into a tailspin.

I didn’t leave my room that day, hiding from the world.

The second day of the conference—when Westin noticed my absence.

No wonder he thought I might have killed Emile.

Tammy Theisen testified that Shannon was the one to tell her about Jolene, Grace’s mother, wanting to terminate the pregnancy.

And how Emile was with us, how he stopped her by calling Jolene’s father.

Shannon had told her the night before, sneaking it into a conversation about her time as a skater, years ago.

Tammy said it didn’t seem unusual. Shannon was always gossiping.

Treating the girls more like peers than kids.

Like she still wanted to be one of them.

Then came the fight with Grace. Her rage, insisting on seeing Emile. Shannon knew that would be enough to make Grace a suspect, but she made sure of it with the blood on Grace’s skate, and the missing dress.

Grace would be a suspect, but also any one of us. The three Orphans whose secrets Emile was about to disclose.

The ADA argued, and the jury believed, that she killed Emile with the heel of a blade to mimic the way Kayla had threatened her mother. And that she intentionally struck Emile four times, mirroring my crime from fifteen years before.

Turning against her to get a reduced sentence, Artis testified that she’d called him from Emile’s office, claiming it had all happened in the heat of the moment.

He joined in the cause to cover up her crime, helping clean the office, move the body to the field, then advising Shannon on what to say to the police so they would question Grace and test her skates for blood.

And about the clothes she was wearing when she was last seen with Emile.

And, of course, there was that very convenient video demonstrating Grace’s rage.

Getting Jolene to summon me from Aspen was the last part of Shannon’s plan.

Shannon and Artis were both sentenced to prison.

Maybe not for quite as long as they could have been.

But I’m not in any position to throw stones.

Shannon’s son is now living with her mother, a retired widow in Oregon.

I try not to think about the way she was with us, one of the worst bleacher bees, and the woman who raised a sociopath.

I returned to testify in the other trial—the one against Dawn Sumner for abuse and neglect of a child named Indy Cunningham.

We had all been subpoenaed. Me, Jolene, Kayla, Grace.

I’ve heard rumblings about Mio and Hugo and even Bobby Stark providing testimony.

Our entire story is about to be told in a court of law. Justice for Indy after all these years.

Kayla asked us to come to her farm one day while we waited our turn. We had a lot of sorting out to do about our time here, things we never said back then or any time since. Where all of it has lived inside us, how we managed to move forward.

Which made us all think about Indy as we sat at Kayla’s kitchen table, with Grace watching her iPad in the other room.

Jolene wanted to raise a glass to her, so we lifted coffee cups and pretended this was enough. Knowing in our hearts that she would never leave us.

Kayla said, “We didn’t know the half of what happened to her.”

It was too much for her to bear. We could all see that now.

Her mother’s motives in sending her away, the falling and the bruise and the suspension.

Dawn’s betrayal. But the worst, we all agreed, was the fact that Bobby had rejected her.

It didn’t matter that he had to save his career, or that it was her mother who pushed him into that corner.

In the end, she had been expendable. And that made him feel like a lie.

“We couldn’t have known. She kept a lot inside,” Jolene said.

And that had to be right, because if it was wrong, it couldn’t be sorted into a file and put in a box, with the lid closed tight.

Right next to the files we had about our time here.

About Dawn’s abuse, which had made us vulnerable, opening the door for Emile to alter each of our lives.

Denying justice for Kayla. Making a life decision for Jolene.

Ending Indy’s skating career. And me, well. I’ve said enough about that already.

The files are sorted and locked away in the backs of our minds, because it’s just not possible to find peace, let alone joy, with open boxes.

Later, we peel Grace away from her show, and Kayla leads us on a walk through the woods of her property.

Where there is a frozen pond. And four pairs of skates laid out on a wooden bench.

I haven’t been on the ice for seventeen years.

Jolene and Kayla never stopped, and this still surprises me.

We sit on the bench and lace up the skates. Mine are new, but somehow the right size. The Orphans have gone to a lot of trouble.

Kayla looks at the soft flesh on my fingers and reaches out with hers. They have the familiar calloused grooves from pulling on nylon laces.

“Do you need help?” she asks with a slight laugh.

I start to say, No, I’ve got it, but instead I tell her the truth.

“I might.”

I turn off my thoughts as I slip my feet inside the stiff leather and start to pull.

“Come on,” Jolene says. “It’s like riding a bike.”

We step onto the ice and Kayla takes off, the way she always did. As if no time has passed. And I see the girl who lives inside her as she flies away, looking for a moment of escape.

Jolene takes her time, stroking beside her daughter like a mother hen with her baby chick. But soon Grace takes off, too, chasing after Kayla.

I push away from the bench and feel that first glide. On a new skate. A new blade. And then the other boot drops to the ice, digs into an edge. Left, then right. Left, then right. I gather speed.

And then my arms lift from my sides as my knees bend deeper. I reach the corner and make the turn, right over left, right over left, crossovers to the other side. Then back to the long, curved strokes that build more speed.

Kayla laps me, her ponytail flying in the air, before she cuts down the middle and takes off for an enormous double toe loop. She looks back when she lands, the pond making a loud thud as it resettles.

“Not bad for an old lady, right?”

“Not bad at all,” I call out.

“Come on! Catch up!” she says, speeding past me.

She is magnificent, this woman who was once a girl being dragged out of the woods.

And so is Jolene, her life defined by another, but not a hint of what might have been anywhere in her eyes.

“Watch this!” Grace calls out from across the pond. We gather, side by side, and watch as she launches into a huge triple flip, one arm over her head.

“She’s such a show-off!” Jolene says, though she’s smiling ear to ear.

“No,” I tell her. “She’s perfect.” And I think to myself that she truly is—even if there are still storms inside her that need to be quelled.

“Well,” Jolene says. “She’s better than we were, that’s for sure.”

To which Kayla replies, “Speak for yourself.”

Jolene gives her a shoulder bump.

I had such a desperate longing when I was at The Palace.

Living as an Orphan at Avery Hall while my mother was slowly dying 289 miles away from me.

Crawling into Indy’s bed. Into Dawn’s blue coat, and finally, into those tangled sheets at her guest cottage.

I hated myself for a long time, until I found a way to be redeemed—my mission to save damaged children.

As laughter fills my chest, I look at these women who were once girls just down the hall. How they’ve filled their lives with love, and I know I have more work to do. Starting right here. With them. On the ice.

Grace passes me. “You’re too slow!” she says.

So I bend my knees, pushing into the blades, deeper and faster, right arm sweeping overhead, then a three turn and I’m backward. Crossovers around the bend, then forward again. My body moving, making shapes that feel glorious. Not caring how they look to the outside world.

Moving across the ice so fast my eyes begin to water.

Then Grace comes back to skate beside me.

“You’re crying,” she says. But I tell her no—it’s just the wind.

And she looks at me perplexed, like I should know what this is. Don’t I remember?

As she skates away, she yells back to me—

“It’s not the wind.”

And I think, No. It’s not the wind.

It’s the joy of being on a blade, finally returned.