Page 33 of Blade

“You think Westin is involved somehow?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

I can tell he doesn’t agree. “I think anything that hurts The Palace hurts him, and I don’t see a way around it. If Grace knows something about the murder that implicates another skater or parent—or even something about Emile—that would damage the program.”

Artis sighs. “Look—that applies to pretty much everyone in this town. It wouldn’t survive without the skating center. I sure as hell wouldn’t be here,” he says.

“Okay, then,” I say. “That’s our first line of defense—Grace is being framed. And it could be anyone—even a stranger. That will buy us time.”

“And if the evidence keeps pointing her way?”

I shrug. “You’ve read my cases. You know how I operate.”

I see the skepticism on his face. I’ve seen it before. Not everyone believes in trauma psychology. “You disagree with the defenses I use?” I ask him.

“Nope,” he says. “Look—I’ll argue whatever the fuck I can to get my client off. Even the guilty ones.”

At the first stop sign, Artis makes a right-hand turn, then drives past The Palace—too fast for my mind to orient itself, to linger. Next, we’re at the short driveway that leads to the rectangular beige building.

I can hear my mother’s words now, something about the landscaping and dormers. She didn’t want to leave me in a place that looked like this. A beige box. An older woman in an apron, too tired to climb the stairs. And the other Orphans luring me away and down the hall. Pulling me into their fold. The family that would replace her, and my father and brother. Stand-ins that would have to do because she didn’t want me to see her illness progress. Or the side effects of the treatments.

Artis turns into the empty driveway and parks the car. He gets out like this is nothing, to him or to me. Like these memories aren’t quicksand.

I follow him silently, up the stone steps with the metal rail, to the front door. It’s open, and he walks right in, with me close behind.

It’s the smell that gets me first, drags me back in time. I can’t pin it exactly. Industrial cleaning products. The distinct must old houses take on and can’t shake. The decor has changed. Beige paint on the walls, and wood floors replacing flowered wallpaper and pale linoleum. But the smell lives deeper than that. Too deep to be stripped away by the redecorating or the Christmas tree in the TV room, still flickering with colored lights and ornaments.

Artis keeps moving to the door on the right. The apartment where Edie used to live, which is now inhabited by Shannon Finch.

He appears steeped in anticipation as he knocks, his parka rising and falling with his breath. And I fight to catch mine. Everywhere, I see the ghosts. Kayla. Jolene. Indy. Mio. Dressed in leggings and sneakers, hair pulled into ponytails and buns. And back up the stairs at the end of the hallway, to my room on the left, and the Orphans at the end. And the bathroom across the hall—which brings a smile as I remember caking on makeup, Kayla with her Jack Daniel’s, teasing us. But then other things creep from my mind, where they’ve been hiding, and I stop before I sink deeper.

Thank God the door opens, and a woman stands before us.

Shannon Finch.

She looks surprised when she sees me, not because she didn’t expect us. But maybe because I’m nothing like the girl she knew fourteen years ago.

“Ana Robbins!” she says, moving toward me with open arms, pulling me into a halfhearted squeeze.

“Shannon ...” I say, not wanting to finish the thought that sits on my tongue.You’re still here.

She looks exactly the same to me. Corkscrew curls. Round face. Petite body, only now with curves and some extra weight.

“I know,” she says, answering the question I didn’t ask. “Weird, right? But I always loved it here. Even after I quit skating and moved back to Oregon.” Then she shrugs like this is somehow inexplicable, her inability to move on.

“Come in,” she says, leading us past a small foyer with a desk and an actual phone, a landline, to a small living area in the back.

In my three years at Avery Hall, I never entered this space. Edie kept it locked, with the key attached to a coiled chain that hung from her neck so she wouldn’t lose it. So we couldn’t get our hands on it. As if we’d ever want to.

We sit on stiff sofas, like the ones at the condo. Take off our coats and lay them beside us. I hear cartoons playing through the walls from another room. There’s a LEGO set on the floor in the corner. I don’t ask questions about her personal life. I don’t want to answer any about mine.

“It’s so awful about Grace,” she says. “And Emile. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Artis bows his head in reverence to Emile’s tragic passing, though something about it feels contrived. A lawyer down to his bones.

Shannon appears unfazed. Maybe even excited by the drama this has created, and that she’s now a part of it.

“What are they saying?” she asks.

Artis launches in about the meeting tomorrow with the ADA, and how Grace still claims that she didn’t kill Emile in the field.