Chapter 7 #2
“Remind me to thank the Parks Department for that,” Grace said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She breathed in the cold and immediately felt her sinuses seize; there was a sharpness to the air that made her feel clean in a way sleep and caffeine never could.
They made their way down to the bank. Grace’s boots slipped a little on the tamped-down snow path and Anna steadied her, laughing. “You really are a land mammal,” Anna said.
“Embrace your evolutionary destiny,” Grace shot back, but let Anna guide her to the bench where everyone swapped shoes for skates.
Grace eyed the white boots with skepticism.
She’d skated maybe twice since grade school, both times under extreme social duress.
But Anna looked so genuinely delighted to be out there, she couldn’t chicken out now.
Anna was already lacing up, her hands moving fast and sure.
“It’s just like riding a bike,” Anna said, “only when you fall you look way cooler.”
Grace wobbled as she stood. Anna took her arm and, with a dramatic bow, led her onto the ice.
At first Grace couldn’t make her feet do anything but shuffle, and she flailed her arms for balance, certain she was about to wipe out in front of an audience of fifty.
But Anna was a patient, if mischievous, teacher.
She coached Grace through slow, careful pushes, and when Grace nearly lost it on a patch of bumpy ice, Anna yanked her upright with an easy strength that was, she remembered, probably supernatural.
They circled the lake’s edge, moving cautiously at first, then gaining a little speed.
Anna kept up a running commentary: “Don’t look at your feet, look where you want to go,” and “Bend your knees, not your pride,” and, after a particularly elegant near-splat, “That one’s called the Reverse Swan Dive.
” Grace started to laugh, and it surprised her how much she didn’t care if anyone else was watching.
After a few laps, Grace managed to let go of Anna’s arm for almost an entire minute. “You’re a natural!” Anna whooped, pumping her fist. “Or, at least, you’re not actively trying to die.”
“High praise,” Grace said, grinning. Her cheeks hurt from smiling and the cold. For the first time in months, she felt something unburdened in her chest, a weight she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying since October.
Around the far bend of the lake, a cluster of adults glided in easy, practiced loops.
Grace recognized several faces from the town’s holiday committees: there was Tom from the flower shop, in a pea-green scarf; the librarian, who skated with graceful, economical strokes; and, of course, Martha Lane, whose platinum hair was visible halfway down the shore, a shock of tinsel in a crowd.
Martha skated with her husband, a tall man with a very rectangular chin, who looked like he’d spent his life holding court at the Chamber of Commerce and had never once fallen down.
They didn’t speak, but moved in a rhythm, their hands sometimes touching, sometimes not.
Grace found herself oddly moved by the sight.
This was, after all, the woman she’d seen in her vision with a broken arm.
For a moment she wondered if it was worth warning her, but then remembered how the last attempt to warn someone had gone: sideways, at best.
Anna must have read her mind. “You okay?” she asked, voice softening. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
Grace shook her head, blinked hard. “It’s nothing. I just—sometimes the future is too much in my face. I’m trying to be here, you know?” She gestured at the sky, the ice, the goofy Christmas playlist blaring from the sound system.
Anna squeezed her hand. “Good. That’s what today is for.”
They kept skating, sometimes talking, sometimes just moving in companionable silence.
Anna told stories about law office drama, a client who tried to pay their retainer in live turkeys; a junior partner who’d accidentally sent a risqué meme to the entire county court listserv; her own boss, who had a secret stash of single-malt for the “really hard days.” Grace laughed at all of it and told her about Caroline’s theory that the true killer was an “incel Santa Claus” who wanted to ruin every holiday.
“That’s… both horrifying and plausible,” Anna said.
“If you ever catch him, I want an exclusive interview.”
They were in the middle of a slow, careful lap when it happened.
Grace saw the event in a kind of double exposure, both as it actually occurred, and as she’d seen it in the vision days before.
Martha Lane, skating backward to show off, caught the toe pick of her blade on a stray branch embedded in the ice.
There was a split second where her arms windmilled, then she went down, hard, right side first.
The sound was sickening, a dry crack that silenced the entire lake.
Grace lurched forward, but Anna was already moving, gliding fast and low, reaching Martha before anyone else could. Martha’s husband knelt beside her, flapping his hands, trying to help but only making it worse. Anna knelt, too, taking control of the situation with calm, practiced authority.
“It’s okay, don’t move, you’re going to be fine,” Anna said, voice soothing. She looked up at the crowd, searching for someone official. “Does anyone have a phone? Someone call the paramedics.”
Martha bit down on her lip, but didn’t scream. Her face was white and streaked with sweat, breath coming in sharp pants. Grace knelt nearby, keeping her distance, but met Martha’s eyes for a brief, intense moment.
“It’ll be okay,” Grace said, then realized how useless that sounded. “You’ll heal fast.”
The paramedics, at least three of them on standby for events like this, arrived within a minute.
They splinted Martha’s arm, loaded her onto a small rescue sled, and skated her off the ice with professional, efficient care.
The crowd watched, solemn and quiet, then slowly returned to their own skating, like a record picking up after a skipped track.
Anna stood and dusted snow from her knees. “That was… not the best,” she said, then managed a wan smile. “But you saw it coming, right?”
Grace nodded, her own knees shaking a little. “Not exactly this. But I knew she’d end up in the hospital. I thought maybe something worse, but—” She didn’t finish the sentence.
Anna looked at her with real kindness. “Sometimes a broken arm is just a broken arm,” she said. “It doesn’t have to mean the whole universe is unraveling.”
Grace let the words settle. She looked up at the sky, at the circling skaters, the trees rimmed with white. She breathed in, slow and deep. The vision had come true, in a way, but it hadn’t destroyed anything. Maybe she was allowed to be wrong in good ways, too.
Anna nudged her with a hip. “We’re not done, are we? I was just getting into my groove.”
“Race you to the far dock,” Grace said, and then they were off, slicing through the blue-white expanse, chasing each other in the cold, clear air, and leaving all prophecies behind.