Page 35 of Blade

“Yes—but probably not what you’re thinking. Grace, right? Because she made it to Nationals?”

She’s right. This is what I’m assuming.

Shannon smiles. “Nope. He was taking Tammy. Go figure.”

And now I think about the house up the hill, the guest cottage I could walk to from here. The night Emile joined us for dinner, and everything that followed. Emile always had his own agenda.

“Maybe he knew Grace would never leave. She was in deep with Dawn andGerard,” she says, referring to Dr. Westin with disparaging intonation.

“Was she in deeper than the others?” Artis asks, reading my mind.

Shannon looks at me. “You remember what it was like, right, Ana? How Dawn had her favorites?”

The secret dinners at her house. Emile in her guest house. Yes, I remember.

“Anyway,” she continues, “Emile was trying to keep it under wraps. He didn’t want Dawn to have time to change anyone’s mind about leaving.”

“Did you see the fight?” I want to get back to Grace and Emile.

“I got there right after Grace slapped the phone away. That’s when Tammy said, ‘Ask Emile—he knows the truth,’ or something like that.”

Artis looks surprised. “So that’s why you called Emile to get Grace?”

“No—Grace demanded it. She said she had to see Emile. After the fight, she broke down crying. I brought her here, to my apartment. Closed the door. She just fell into my arms and sobbed, asking for him over and over.”

This was all making sense until right now. “Why was she so upset?”

Shannon looks at me like I’m the one who should know the answer. “She was an Orphan. And the only one. I knew what it was like for her. Because of—well, you and the others when we were skaters together. She had trouble regulating her emotions. Tears to temper tantrums. I tried to help her. It’s—well, to be honest. It hasn’t been easy.”

I think now that this was always her nature. Shannon tried to be friends with us, but we didn’t trust her. Her mother was dangerous.

“Were they that close?” I ask now. “Emile and Grace?”

Shannon shakes her head. “No—I mean—all the skaters loved Emile. He’s older now—so it’s different. The girls don’t have crusheson him the way they used to. But you remember—he was the antidote to Dawn. Still—Grace would never have left The Palace for him.”

“Well,” Artis says. “This just opened up a whole can of worms—and by ‘worms’ I mean suspects.” He smiles like a little boy, and I have a flash of him dissecting that frog in eighth grade. “Dawn would have been beside herself if she knew.”

Shannon leans back, crosses her arms. “Damn straight. Trying to steal her students? That’s a declaration of war in our world.”

I think about how Emile used to live in Dawn’s guest cottage. She had ruined him and then saved him. At least, that’s how he saw it. I wonder how she felt about their relationship. If this betrayal would have been a knife in the back.

“So you think that’s what Grace wanted to hear from Emile? The truth about him leaving and not taking her with him?”

“That’s all I can think. Look—Emile was very paternal with her. Maybe she was triggered by his leaving—because of what happened to her back home.”

Jolene had told me about Grace’s stepfather leaving them. She framed it around the skating—like that was her only concern when it happened. She made it sound like her husband and Grace weren’t close enough for Grace to care.

“Do you have any of her medical or school records?” I ask now. “I remember Edie getting them when I lived here.”

Shannon nods. “The police already requested them. But I told them to come back with a warrant, right, Artis?”

“It’ll take a few days, but they’ll get one.”

“Can I see them?” I ask. Shannon nods, then walks to a small file cabinet hidden beneath a tablecloth. A vase with flowers sits on top of it like it’s an end table. She pulls a file and gives it to me.

“You can take it,” she says. “It belongs to Grace, and you’re her lawyer now.”

I take the file. Artis stands to leave, and I do the same.