Page 10 of Blade

It’s a tired analogy, but we don’t let people drive without obtaining a license. Yet anyone can have a child, raise a child, and not know what the hell they’re doing. No particular preparation, no training beyond whatever modeling they had from their own parents.

When they crash that child into a tree and claim they didn’t know how to steer, well—I sometimes choke on my disdain.

Maybe that’s what this is. The weight pressing on my heart. Somehow I thought we’d all felt the same way about this place. The four of us. The Orphans. If that wasn’t true, which one of us was wrong?

Jolene can see these thoughts as they march across my face like an army headed to battle.

“It was a gift to be here,” she says. “To have the chance for this kind of dream.”

I draw a breath and push it down, hard, into my lungs.

“You know how good she is, right? She landed two triple Axels at Sectionals. Next year she could have a quad. And she’s so beautiful out there ...”

Jolene gets up to find a box of tissues.

“She’s right. I never got close to what she has.”

I release the air from my lungs and feel these things swirl in my memory. The Axel—the hardest of the triple jumps because of theforward takeoff, the extra half rotation required to land backward. More speed. Faster spin in the air. When we were here, the triple Axel was a novelty among the women skaters but also the future of the sport. A future that is now here.

Jolene folds one leg under the other, the way she used to when we lived together at Avery Hall. And for a split second, I see her there, the long red waves of hair, the mischievous smile.

“What doyouthink happened to Emile?” I ask.

Jolene doesn’t look at me but reaches for my hand, and suddenly the comfort she once gave me is back, racing through my blood. Filling my bones.

“If I thought she was in trouble, I would have brought her home.”

“I know.”

“I always looked after you, and Indy ... and Kay—I tried to ...”

“I know.” I close my eyes, jolted by the mention of their names.

Then she laughs before the tears come.

“IndyAna,” she whispers.

I pull my hand away, stand from the bed as if it just caught fire.

“This isn’t about us,” I tell her.

I explain how I have toclinicallyunderstand Grace’s mind. “We need mitigating circumstances—which I can then shape into a defense as an expert. This is what I do now. We need the story, Jo. Not our story, but hers. What happened toher. ToGrace.”

Even as I say these words, I feel split in two. Two chapters of my life. Two entirely different selves. The defender of children. The helpless Orphan. The one I love. The one I hate.

Grace’s words ring in my head.It’s all your fault.

I recite the evidence. She was last seen getting a ride from Emile Dresiér, from Avery Hall to The Palace. She was wearing the signature blue skating dress with yellow butterflies—the same one every skater got when they walked through the door, even for a one-week summer session. It was brilliant advertising—wherever those skaters went to train next, The Palace would go with them.

“And the skates,” I say now. “They were in her locker, cleaned, but with traces of blood on the right boot. The lock was intact.”

Jolene gets up, shaking her head. “You’re talking like she might have done this.”

“That’s what I do, Jo—I’m not an investigator. I build defenses.”

“No!” The softness, the vulnerability drains from Jolene’s face as she becomes a warrior for her daughter. And this, too, brings me back. Jolene had tried to protect us for as long as she could.

“Grace didn’t do this,” she insists. “She left Emile at the rink and came back here. Anyone could have taken her skates. Taken the dress.”