Page 58 of Blade

“What’s wrong?” Dawn asked me. “I can always tell with you.”

I felt my mouth go dry and my lips tremble, but I got the words out. About Indy’s bruise from the falls and “I think she needs help.”

She smiled, rose from her chair. Left the room. And I followed her.

Into the front hall where she kept her bag. Inside was a notebook where she recorded her lessons. Good girl. Bad girl. Her beige skates with the gold blades.

I see her now as the cold air stings my face.

“Don’t tell me what Indy needs,” she said.

Then she took one skate from the bag and shoved it into my chest.

“Take it!” she commanded. So I did. I took her skate and held it.

She reached for me quickly, grabbing my other hand and shoving it into the boot.

She pushed me, one step at a time, until my back was against the wall. She raised my hand over my head, the one that was inside the boot of the skate, and turned the blade to face her.

“Is this how it goes?” she asked then.

“Is this how you imagined it?” She pressed the end of the blade to her throat. Then she went on, about Indy’s story, her fantasy about me with blades for hands. She did know!

“Or like this?” she asked, moving my hand and the blade to her temple.

“Do it! Come on! Do it!”

And I started to cry as she pulled the skate from my hand, gripping its heel with her own. She turned the blade to face me. Pressing it first to my neck. And then to my head, while tears streamed down my cheeks and my knees began to buckle.

I could feel her breath on my face when she said—“I am what you should fear.” The same words she’d said to Kayla after she closed her hands around her throat.

She told me to never speak of Indy again. Not to her. Not to anyone.

“I’m the coach. I know what’s best for her.”

Then she told me to leave, to walk home through the woods, down the mountain. And I did—I ran as fast as I could away from her.

But I would be back two days later as if nothing had ever happened. Except for one thing. I never spoke to her about Indy or the bruise ever again.

I see a truck’s headlights barreling from behind. I’m blocking its path. It swerves to the left—barely missing me. I hang my head, which is suddenly light from the rush of adrenaline.

My God.

Pressing gently on the gas, hands back on the wheel, I talk myself through it as I resume my return to Echo. Realizing for the first time.

Dawn knew about Indy’s story.How? It could have been a million different ways. We didn’t think anything about it, except me with my guilt. Indy probably told half the rink. Jolene would have told Hugo. And from there to Emile, maybe. He would have loved telling her that story. Watching her face twitch with humiliation, however fleeting it might have been.

Dawn knew. Emile knew. The method of the murder is too distinct to be a coincidence.

I drive past the condo where Grace and Jolene are waiting for me, all the way to the stop sign and intersection with the access road.

I turn left and pass The Palace, then Avery Hall. Around a bend, a straightaway, another sharp curve along the switchback until I come to the entrance of the long driveway. The one that splits at a fork, with the dirt road on the right. The path to the guest cottage where Emile used to live.

The left one, heading to Dawn Sumner.

It’s all coming together. Dawn had so much to lose if Emile left, if he finished that exposé about the things that happened back then. And she knew about the dream. The blade used as a weapon. And three of us were here when Emile was murdered. All three of us with reason to want him dead.

Maybe Grace isn’t the one being framed for his murder. Maybe she’s just a breadcrumb for a trail that leads right back to us. The Orphans.