Blade, page 19
“Yes. And we’re both on that list,” I confess.
He dives into the hot tea, slurping it into his mouth. Swallowing as it burns his tongue.
“Ah,” he says when he’s done, and the tea is back on the table. “Because of the exposé—he was talking about the past, wasn’t he? When you were here?”
I feel this sink into my gut. The past that is now front and center in my mind. The smell seeping from the floor and walls. The ghost whispering in the room.
“What do you need?”
“Because you were in Aspen. At the conference.”
Yes—and I was gone the second day. Spooked by that text message, the emoji of the blade.
“You knew I was there before it even started,” I tell him. “Who else?”
Westin shrugs. “You were on the website—as the keynote speaker.”
“For a conference on childhood trauma. Not exactly a rock concert.”
“True,” he says.
I pull out my phone and find the message. I hold it up so he can see, squinting his eyes to focus.
He leans back, and I place it face down on the table.
“You think Emile sent that? The day before he died?”
“I don’t know. I’m asking you.”
Now a long pause. A deep breath. “Maybe. Emile was . . .”
“Damaged.”
Westin nods. “And this exposé . . .”
“It was about this place—now, but also fourteen years ago. It was about Indy.”
“Well,” Westin says. “I didn’t know anything about it. Not the exposé, not the text message.”
I study his face. I can’t decide if he’s lying, which is unlike me. I can read my clients, a judge, a juror—like the back of my hand.
“But I do know something you may not,” he says. “That’s what I was trying to get to earlier, when I asked you about Jolene and her experience here.”
“Why don’t you go first,” I tell him. Grace didn’t want me to tell him about Jolene. She must have known why he was asking. The dots he was trying to connect.
Finally, he tells me.
“Have you read her file? The one that came from her school back home? From her doctors?”
I think about the papers sitting on the passenger seat of Jolene’s car. How I was reading them by the side of the road when Jill called.
“I got through most of it,” I tell him.
“Well—you might want to start from the beginning.”
That night—that’s the piece to the puzzle I didn’t see until just now. Jolene went home, pregnant with Grace. A home that was filled with violence.
Violence begets violence. It was the first thing I learned when I started to work with child offenders.
Westin has been wondering the same thing. Trying to understand Grace’s behavior—he must have seen it before that video. The rage that was inside her.
I get up from the table, pushing out the chair. And do what I should have done that night fifteen years ago.
“I have to go,” I tell Westin.
And then I leave this place like it’s the black van in the field that night. Like a bat out of hell.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Excerpt from Testimony of Jolene Montgomery
Ada Olson: Isn’t it true that you were concerned about Grace before she was a suspect in Emile Dresiér’s murder?
Jolene Montgomery: In what way?
Ada Olson: You sought a psychological evaluation of your daughter when she was five years old. Isn’t that right?
Jolene Montgomery: Yes, but . . .
Ada Olson: And what did that evaluation say?
Jolene Montgomery: That she had an extremely high IQ. That she had some impulse issues . . .
Ada Olson: I have the report here. It says more than that.
Jolene Montgomery: Okay.
Ada Olson: It says that she demonstrated signs of conduct disorder—a precursor to antisocial personality disorder in adults.
Jolene Montgomery: Yes, but that all went away after I got her on the ice. There’s been no sign of it since she was six or seven.
Ada Olson: Until the day Emile Dresiér disappeared. It’s right here—captured in this video.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ana
Before—One Year and Nine Months at The Palace
Jolene was gone, just like Kayla, except with a shorter goodbye and a much bigger heartache.
And Indy grew even more defiant after her disastrous finish at Nationals, her trajectory flattened, her promise fading. Dawn pawned her off on Coach Emile that whole spring and throughout the summer.
But when the fall rushed in and The Palace began gearing up for the start of the competition season, Indy’s reprieve from practicing the triple Axel appeared to be over. And the bruise that had receded came back with each new failed attempt, each crash, hip onto ice.
Mio didn’t understand any of this when they told her. It was Monday at ten o’clock, and they should have been asleep because of the early training and school the next day. But they needed help.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” Mio asked, looking at the bruise on Indy’s leg, holding the near-empty bottle of DMSO.
“It’s not legal,” Ana answered.
“I didn’t want you to get in trouble,” Indy added.
But, they both explained, taking turns as Mio absorbed the information with great alarm, her supply was low and she needed a ride to the vet where Hugo used to go . . . and please just drive us there tomorrow.
Mio leaned in closer, gently touching Indy’s damaged hip.
“You need a doctor,” she told her. “This stuff from the vet—how do you even know what it really does?”
Indy started to explain about Hugo, and how he said it was legal except for the morphine that was added, but Mio cut her off.
“This has to stop, Indy,” she said.
“It will—when I land it. And I will. I know I will. I’m getting closer. I just have a mental block.”
Mio shook her head. “No, Indy. That’s not why.”
Indy explained about Dr. Westin. “He said my mind is making my body hold back, not get the speed, not use all my strength on the takeoff . . . because I’m afraid.”
Mio cut her off again. “That is all bullshit,” she said.
She climbed out of bed and straightened her pajamas. “It’s not your body holding back, Indy. It’s not about fear. It’s your technique. The takeoff is wrong, and Dawn knows it.”
Indy was stunned. “What do you mean?”
Mio sighed. “I told her last year, when you fell even harder. I told Dawn what I saw. She even nodded, because she knows. I thought she told you, but that maybe you didn’t listen.”
Ana watched as Indy turned bright red.
“Why would she do that?” Ana asked. Her grudge against Patrice couldn’t be so strong she would sabotage herself—Indy was her ticket to having a skater in the next Olympic cycle.
“Nothing Dawn does makes sense,” Mio said. “She uses the jumps—and her ridiculous training methods—to make all of you worship her, and only her. Isn’t that what she says in that dumb book? She is crazy.”
Indy shook her head defiantly. “Well, I don’t worship her.”
“And that’s why she’s been hurting you.”
Indy stood up, straight as a giant tree.
“I don’t care about Dawn Sumner—show me how to land the Axel.”
The rink was locked, but Mio knew a way in through a bathroom window off the lobby.
“I leave it open so I can come here alone,” she said. “I only train in Echo to see my competition. Not for Dawn.”
Ana looked at Indy, surprised, though now so many things made sense. The way Mio always brought her own coach. And why she never stayed for more than a couple of months at a time.
They followed her past the ticket counter to the rink, using their phones to light the way. Then around the boards to the back corner where the Zamboni sat idle, smelling of gasoline and oil. On the wall was a panel of switches.
Mio flipped three of them, bringing light to the empty arena.
Ana stared up at the rafters. “It’s so quiet,” she whispered.
Mio smiled. “Yes. Exactly.”
They put on their skates, opened the boards, and stepped onto the rink, taking the first strokes.
“It sounds different,” Indy said.
“It feels different,” Ana said.
“Without Dawn, it’s just ice,” Mio said. “Magical ice.”
Like baby ducks, Ana and Indy followed Mio, building speed, strokes and crossovers, front and then back, until she eased them all into the center and came to a stop.
Except for their breath, in and out, and a soft buzz from the lights far above their heads, the rink was suffused with a profound sense of ease.
“These are the problem,” Mio said, taking Indy’s arms by each wrist. Swinging them back by her hips, then up into the air.
“The takeoff?” Indy asked.
Mio shook her head, up and down. “I told Dawn. And she knows. She is a good coach. But not to you, Indy. She is not good to you.”
Indy held a hand to her mouth. “So she’s been letting me fall all this time? Knowing how to make it stop?”
“I don’t know what is in that woman’s heart,” Mio said. “But let’s make her not matter to you anymore.”
“Show me,” Indy said. “What am I doing wrong with my arms?”
Mio let go of her, then took off, stroking around the edge again, building speed, cutting into the center, making a three turn onto her back-right outside edge.
“Watch my right arm,” she called out, then stepped forward onto her left blade, both arms swinging behind her, right leg extended parallel beneath them. She shot up into the air, arms and free leg now in front, then tucking in. Two and a half rotations, then the release onto the right toe pick, then the back outside edge. A perfect double Axel.
“Did you see it?” Mio asked when she skated back to Indy and Ana.
They were still confused, until Mio went again with the same instructions—to watch her right arm. She took off—the same double Axel, only this one higher.
“Did you see what I did that time?” she asked.
Indy’s eyes lit up. “You swept it up, not around.”
Mio nodded. “Yes!”
And from there she gave them both a lesson about physics and propulsion, and how Indy needed that right arm, the one on the outside, to drive straight up past her hip and her chest right up to the sky.
Indy was sweeping that arm from right to left—the direction of the rotation but not the height.
“Punch it,” she said. “Punch the sky,” because that would bring more height, and it was the height she needed more than a faster rotation in the air.
They used Mio’s phone to film Indy as she practiced the double Axel, focusing on that one arm, punching the sky, not sweeping to the side, until she made the correction. Only then was it time to try the triple.
Which she did, and not just once or twice but three times because her right arm was stubborn. She skated back to Mio and Ana, tears in her eyes, rubbing her hip.
“I can’t stop it,” she cried. “It keeps swinging around.”
Mio took off her mittens, which were padded with down.
“You do have fear,” she said. “Your brain is hijacking the instruction because it doesn’t understand. It doesn’t believe you must get higher to stop falling.”
It was just like Dawn said, Ana thought. Just like Dr. Fear. But then Mio seemed to read her mind.
“It’s not a fight,” Mio said. “You don’t fight the fear. It’s so stupid, these things Dawn says. And that old man.”
Then Mio took the mittens and slipped them inside Indy’s leggings, right on top of the bruise, like a crash pad.
“You have to be kind to the fear. Thank it for protecting you. You have to show it that you’ve heeded its warning and have made adjustments to keep yourself safe.”
Indy looked confused. “Will these really help?”
Ana waited for Mio to tell her the truth—a pair of mittens would do little good against the weight of Indy’s body crashing down on the ice.
But instead, she made a fist and tapped it against the mittens and Indy’s hip.
“See?” she said. “Of course it will help.”
Then she held Indy’s face in her hands and pulled it down so they were eye to eye.
“Your arm is like a broken wing that stops you from flying. And you have to fly.”
“Okay,” Indy said. And Ana watched, desperate for Indy to fix her arm, her broken wing, but also terrified that Indy would crash again and the mittens would do little to help and Mio would be out of tricks.
“Go,” Mio said. “Go and fly.”
Indy skated away, slower this time, until she reached the edge of the ice. She circled the rink, but didn’t cut into the center to set up the jump, and Ana thought maybe she was going to give up, to skate to the doors and then walk to the locker room, take off her skates and never put them on again.
The thought felt like a rebellion, like freedom, until Indy passed the doors and went around another time, her eyes focused on the ice, her expression changing with each shift of the blades, right, left, right, left. Then she picked up speed, cut into the center.
A three turn. Backward, on the right outside edge. Hips square before she stepped forward. Left outside edge, both arms back. Free leg beneath them. Ana heard Mio pull in a gasp as Indy’s arms began to move, the left arm sweeping up and the right arm—there it was—her right arm punching a hole right through the sky.
One, two, three and a half rotations, then the right toe pick sticking the ice just as her arms opened and her left leg unraveled and pulled her down from the pick and onto the blade—a split-second transition.
Like a miracle—a landing.
Chapter Thirty
Ana
Now
Jolene and I stand side by side as images of that night emerge and begin to play. It’s all right there. Her father in the doorway, hitting me. Slapping her. Then her mother. Packing her clothes.
I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me sooner. This thread about Grace. I read the rest of the papers in her file—the reports from her first year of school. There are cycles of abuse within families. Violence can spread like a virus from one generation to the next.
She sees the questions on my face.
Did it spread to Grace? And is she now capable of murder?
“I did the best I could after that night,” Jolene says.
I don’t doubt this. Every parent I’ve seen—they all had good intentions.
“What happened after that night, Jo? I need to know—it could help Grace.”
I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake the story loose. Was Grace raised in the shadow of abuse? Was she abused herself, by her grandfather? Is that what I saw on her face in that video?
Jolene turns from me and walks to the window. There’s nothing to see but complete whiteout as she places both of her palms against the glass. Like she’s looking into a snow globe. Or maybe looking out, trapped inside.
“I did what my mother did,” she continues. “I saved her with skating, Ana. I know I did!”
Maybe it was already too late.
“What happened in kindergarten—the evaluation—do you think it could still be inside her? Enough rage to kill someone?”
These words sound crazy as they now sit between us. The child conceived sixteen years ago now a part of that story. Our story. Emile’s murder a new chapter.
Her face quivers. She wants to say no, but she can’t. I’ve been here before. It’s devastating to see what your own child might be capable of.
She looks at me with pleading eyes. “Do you?” she asks.
Yes.
The answer is part of my bible as a lawyer for violent children. Years of exposure to unpredictable rage can damage a child. Wire their brains to be hypervigilant. To always anticipate danger. Be prepared to fight at any moment. It can interrupt the development of empathy—and lack of empathy is the defining trait of sociopathic illness. There is so much controversy over the ability to rehabilitate. To fix the wires that were laid down in the early years.
Yes, I think. It could still be inside her.
But what matters now is that we keep Grace from getting charged with this crime.
“We have to explain why she asked to see Emile after that fight with Tammy Theisen,” I tell her. “That’s the missing piece to this puzzle.”
Jolene shakes her head. “Fucking Emile. He sent me to that clinic knowing they would turn me away. Giving my father enough time to get here.”
“Oh my God!” I say, having a sudden thought sparked by the memories of the day we went to the clinic.
“Shannon Finch told me that she heard Tammy say something to Grace after the fight. When the video had stopped. She told Grace to ask Emile. That he knew the truth.” I try to explain where this thought has taken me. “We’ve been assuming it was about Emile’s move to California—but what if it wasn’t?”
Jolene’s eyes light up. “The clinic!” she says. “Tammy knew—that’s what she must have told Grace. That I tried to terminate the pregnancy . . . oh God!”
“How would Tammy Theisen know about that?” I ask. “I never told anyone.”
Jolene rises from the couch and begins to pace the room. “Neither did I,” she says. “It was just you, me, and Emile.”
Then, suddenly, I have the answer.
“Shannon Finch,” I tell her. “It was Mrs. Finch who knew about Kayla—when we took her to the clinic after the rape. That’s why she attacked her in the bleachers that day—Shannon told me and Artis the whole story. If Shannon and her mother knew about Kayla, she could have known that you went there too. I don’t know how, but that has to be it.”
Jolene stops walking. Her face streaks red, and her eyes become wide and dark.
“How could she do that? She’s a grown woman now—and Grace has been living with her all this time!”
