Page 84 of Blade

“Yeah,” Grace admits. “I asked her if it was true, and she wouldn’t tell me. She just tried to hug me, saying all that matters is that I’m here. I told her if she wouldn’t tell me the truth, I wanted to see Emile. Tammy said he knew the truth.”

“So he came and picked you up.”

“Yes.”

“And then what happened, Grace? Where did you go?”

She takes a long breath, closes her eyes. Silently mouthing words to herself.Fight the fear.As much as she hates Dr. Westin, she’s internalized the training she learned right here in this room.

“He didn’t deny it when I asked him. He said it was complicated and we should go to his office to talk, and then I remembered that I’d left my skates. We drove to the rink, and we went inside. The sessions were over. The snack bar was closed. I was gonna grab my skates and leave them outside the pro shop so they could be sharpened in the morning.”

“And where did Emile go?” I picture the scene. The pro shop was in the back of the snack bar. I get a flash—the spinning wheels of the sharpener, the high-pitched squeal when the blades were pressed between them. The smell of burning metal and polished leather.

The rink would have been dark by then, maybe just the emergency lights glowing in the hallways. I think back to the night Mio took us there, me and Indy.

“He said he was going to his office to wait for me.”

“His office?” I ask her. Emile never had his own office when I was here.

But she points at the wall to the right. “In there.”

“So you were both coming to this hallway—to the offices. You to get your skates from this office, and Emile to wait for you in his?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But he went ahead of me because I had to use the bathroom. So I went to the locker room first. When I was done, I walked up through the bleachers and down the hall, and that’s when I heard them yelling.”

“Who?”

“Dawn and Emile. They were in his office, and the door was closed.”

“What were they yelling about?”

Now her face grows more distant. Cautious.

“Emile was saying ‘I know everything’ over and over. And Dawn was saying stuff like ‘How could you do this to me?’ and about how she’d given him a life. After he’d failed as a skater.”

“What did Emile say he knew?” I ask, though I’m not sure I want the answer.

“He said he knew about Indy Cunningham, and how Dawn ruined her career.”

I know what that was about. The drugs Indy had to use. The report made to the officials at Sectionals the Olympic year, after she’d landed the triple Axel.

Two weeks later, Indy came back to The Palace. Her mother was with her. Patrice.Fucking Patrice.She begged Dawn to help her appeal the decision of the USFS and ISU to not let her compete at Nationals. To help them reverse the disqualification.

Dawn swore she was doing what she could. She said she didn’t know who’d reported her. Dawn told her there was always next year, and too bad she would miss the Olympics. Four years wasn’t that long to wait.

It washes through me, the sequence of events, electrifying my arms.

Indy had just wanted to go home to train again with Bobby Stark. She had no idea why she’d really been sent away. None of us did.

But then Grace has more to tell me, about the other things Emile said the night he disappeared.

“He said he knew things about other girls who skated with her. And how this place would be ruined if people found out.”

“What about them?” I ask, my voice trembling.

But she doesn’t answer. Instead she says, “They weren’t alone.”

“What do you mean?”