Edge of the Past (20 page)

I picked up my empty glass from the coffee table and went into the kitchen. The dream world I’d been in since Sergei arrived rapidly disintegrated around me. I boosted myself up onto the island and poured a fresh serving of the sweet red wine. With the kitchen open to the living room, I could hear most of Sergei’s side of the conversation, and I gathered Elena wanted him to get something for Liza.

I tried to tune out Sergei’s voice as I watched the rain form squiggly patterns on the window above the sink. If Elena stuck around the Cape, this call was only the beginning of many disruptions to come. She’d constantly be in my face, either criticizing me or seeking Sergei’s assistance. We wouldn’t have a moment of peace. And I wasn’t sure if I had the patience to put up with all the problems.

My fingers drummed on the granite. The wine wasn’t doing its job of relaxing me. The longer the phone call lasted, the hotter I boiled inside.

I was on a second glass when Sergei entered the kitchen. He eased himself between my knees and set his hand on my thigh.

“Sorry about that,” he said, stroking my leg.

“Is Liza okay?” I asked in a strained voice.

“Yeah, she’ll be fine. Elena wanted…” He cleared his throat. “Never mind. We can pretend we weren’t interrupted.”

He leaned in to kiss me, and I twisted my head. “Don’t.”

I pushed against his stomach so I could have room to jump down from the island. Taking a few steps away from Sergei, I said, “This is how it’s always going to be. Elena’s always going to need you for something. You can’t expect to move her and Liza here and not have it majorly disrupt our lives.”

He closed the gap between us. “It’s going to take some adjusting–“

“It’s gonna take
a lot
of adjusting. And Elena will make things difficult every chance she can get.”

“We can all talk about that and try to come to some understanding.”

“Talking isn’t going to change the fact that she’ll be around
all the time
. She’s going to need help living in a new country, and who do you think she’ll call every time she’s in need?”

“Once she gets settled, things will be more normal.”

“No, they won’t! Normal is gone, and it’s not coming back with Elena and Liza here.”

Sergei gave me a long stare. “Do you want them to stay in Russia?”

There was hesitation in his question as if he feared my answer. My throat ached from a sudden swell of tears, and I realized I had to say everything I was feeling. It was time to be completely honest even if I caused pain in the process.

“I know how deeply you want Liza here, and that’s why I feel terrible for having these thoughts,” I cried. “But I like having you all to myself. I couldn’t wait to be married and to do everything together. Just you and me. And now everything’s going to be different.”

“Are you asking me to make a choice? I don’t…” Sergei’s face wrinkled with hurt and confusion.

“No,” I said quickly and shook my head. “That’s not what I want. I just… I’m trying to deal with this and I don’t know how.” I walked away from Sergei and covered my face. “Maybe Elena’s right. Maybe I am too young for this. I’m scared that everything’s changing so much, and it’s not just having Elena around. I have no idea how to be a mother…”

“I have no idea how to be father,” Sergei said. “We can figure it out together.”

I turned to face him but didn’t respond because I couldn’t shake my fear. Sergei’s eyes drooped, and a chill iced over me. The last time he’d looked at me that way was when I left him after he lied to me about his past.

He swallowed hard. “I told you once there’s nothing we can’t handle together. Do you remember that?”

I nodded weakly as my chin trembled harder. He’d said it after the Olympics when I wondered if we could make a marriage work while training for another run at the Games.

“You don’t believe that anymore?” he asked.

I wanted to so, so badly. Why couldn’t I do it? Tears leaked from my eyes and down my cheeks, and I tasted their salt as I parted my lips to speak.

“I’m trying,” I said hoarsely. “I really am.”

“You have to trust in me. In us.” Sergei came to me and took my face in his hands. “You have to believe we can get through any challenge.”

“I guess I thought after all we went through to be together, there wouldn’t be any more challenges so soon.”

He brushed at my tears with his thumbs. “If I didn’t feel in my bones that getting Liza out of Russia is the best thing for her, I wouldn’t be doing this. I know there’s going to be a few ups and downs, but we can handle them.”

He held my watery gaze, searching my eyes for a reaction. “Are you ready to go through them with me?” he asked.

My first instinct wasn’t to scream yes, and that scared me. A tiny voice of doubt nagged at me, reminding me how trying the ups and downs could be. How would I know for sure if I was ready? How would I know if I could handle the challenge?

Without giving a verbal reply, I wrapped my arms around Sergei and let him swallow me in an embrace.
You just need time
, I repeated over and over. The answers would come.

Chapter Nineteen

The next week I buried myself in preparations for Worlds and the send-off show. We were leaving for Washington D.C. in two days, and I still had errands to run before the trip, including picking up my new long program dress at Louann’s.

“Can I go with Emily to the costume shop tomorrow?” Liza asked Elena as we rode to the rink for the show.

Elena rubbed her temples and then turned to look at Liza in the back seat. “It is too far from here.”

“Please? I really want to see all the costumes.”

I merged the car onto Route Six and gave Elena a sideways glance. She wasn’t going to cave to Liza’s pleading. Perhaps I could take the opportunity to offer an olive branch. My relationship with Elena wasn’t going to improve if I didn’t make an effort.

“Why don’t we all go?” I suggested. “You haven’t seen Boston, and the shop is in the heart of the city.”

Elena switched to massaging her forehead. “If I feel good tomorrow. I have sinus headache all today.”

“You might’ve caught Liza’s cold,” I said.

“So we’re going?” Liza asked in a high-pitched voice.

“We see in morning,” Elena replied.

Liza started to babble about a purple costume she’d worn when she was six, and I was happy to listen to her rambling. With each mile we traveled, my stomach grew tighter with nerves. My moment in the spotlight was fast approaching, and I prayed I wouldn’t humiliate myself.

We arrived at the rink, and I dressed in the bathroom before gathering with the other skaters in the locker room. I opened the door to peek at the crowd and saw the bleachers filling quickly. I recognized a lot of the faces – parents of club members, adult skaters, kids from the Basic Skills classes – and they were all expecting me to skate like a national champion. An Olympic silver medalist. But I’d earned those achievements with Chris, not on my own, and my last memory of skating alone had given me nightmares for years.

My palms began to glisten with sweat.
Breathe, Em,
I commanded, but I couldn’t stop the trembling in my knees. Liza paced beside me, and I knew I should say something to reassure her, but I didn’t have much to offer in my current state.

“Feeling good?” I asked.

She tugged on the edges of her sparkly pink sleeves and didn’t make eye contact with me. “Uh-huh.”

She’d missed a lot of practice time and had been weakened by her cold, so she had to be worried about her readiness. I bent down and hugged her, hoping she couldn’t feel my body shaking with anxiety.

“Just have fun out there,” I said. It wasn’t profound, but it was the best I could do at the moment.

The show director stuck his head into the locker room, and everyone put more urgency into their warm-up. When the lights in the rink lowered, applause rang out from the crowd, and I followed my fellow skaters rinkside. Liza was one of the first performers on the program, so I found a spot in the corner to watch while I continued stretching.

Peering through the darkness, I spotted Sergei sitting with Elena. He’d given me a pep talk after my last practice that afternoon, but I was blanking on what he’d said. The image of me falling on jump after jump kept getting in the way. It was an ugly movie stuck on repeat in my head.

The emcee introduced Liza as a special guest, and she glided out to a warm ovation. I bounced up and down to get loose and to shake out the nerves I felt for her, too. She’d talked about the show constantly the past week. This was her Olympics.

Liza started with some easy moves-in-the-field, building up speed for her first jump. The Chopin piece increased in tempo, and Liza pushed off her left blade for the double Salchow. I gasped as she tilted in the air and came down with her feet crossed. She tumbled to the ice, and the audience clapped to encourage her, but her dazed eyes showed her loss of focus. On the next three jumps she either stumbled or fell, and I had to watch the rest of the program between my fingers.

I felt heavy with sadness as Liza bowed and skated to the boards. She kept her head down the entire way. As soon as she stepped off the ice, Elena and Sergei steered her to the side, and Elena wrapped her in a hug. Sergei stood behind Liza, rubbing her back as she sniffed back tears.

I should’ve encouraged her more before she skated.
After all, it had been my idea to put her in the show.

I swallowed the huge lump in my throat and squeezed my eyes shut. I had to block everything out and set my mind in a good place, but now I had the images of Liza’s stumbles in addition to my past mistakes burned into my brain.

As I walked in circles, visualizing my program, Liza disappeared into the locker room, and Sergei and Elena returned to their seats. I turned away from the bleachers to stare at the concrete wall. If I didn’t see the crowd, my pulse might simmer down.

No luck.

My heart only beat faster, throbbing in my chest so hard I thought my arteries would burst. I had to get to Sergei. He would know the perfect thing to say to calm me.

I whirled around and started for the bleachers, but Sergei and Elena were gone. I spun my head in all directions. Where could they be? Rushing to the locker room, I pushed open the door and found only skaters inside. Liza was sitting with Courtney and didn’t notice my entrance.

Trevor saw me dashing around the rink and said, “You’re up next, Em.”

Where is Sergei?
I made one more frantic scan of the crowd and then stopped to take a deep breath. I had to trust my years of training.

Thunderous applause, the loudest of the night, welcomed me to the ice upon my introduction. My knees were still wobbling, and I reminded myself I could skip my three planned jumps. Only Sergei and my training mates would know I watered down the program.

Coward.

“The Crisis” began, ending my internal debate. I closed my eyes for a moment, picturing myself in a bubble with just the music and me inside. That technique had helped at the Olympics when I suffered from an anxiety attack.
Just me
and the music.

With deep, long crossovers around the ice I approached my first jump, the triple Lutz. Should I try it? What should I do?

Go for it!

That was the last thought I had before I turned and vaulted myself into the air. The spotlight blurred around me as I rotated, and I opened up my arms for the landing. My right blade hit the ice with a scratchy thud, jerking me forward, and a streak of fear took hold of me.

I’m gonna fall!

Straining all my core muscles to remain upright, I stretched out my hand and touched the ice to steady myself. The shock of cold to my fingertips gave me an extra shot of awareness. My leg stopped shaking, and I exhaled as I stood up straight.

I did it!

I forced my excitement down by imagining myself in the bubble again, allowing the music to guide me. The piano notes resonated deep inside me, drawing out all the frustration and unhappiness I’d been experiencing. Every movement brought more of my pent-up feelings to the surface, and as I completed my second successful jump, tears collected in my eyes. There was no stopping the flow of emotion now. I coasted into a back spiral and the Charlotte, and as I moved into the upside-down split position, I blinked and two teardrops fell onto the ice.

I finished the program in a haze, weeping through my final jump and the closing choreography. The audience’s cheers made me cry even harder, and I was a blubbering mess when I left the ice. The performance had forced me to open up, flooding forth all my emotions, and I couldn’t plug the busted dam. I hurried toward the locker room, but a hand touched my shoulder from behind.

“Em!” Sergei circled in front of me.

I wiped my face and cried, “Where were you?”

“When?”

“Before I skated. Where were you? I looked for you and couldn’t find you.”

“Elena was feeling dizzy, so I walked with her outside.”

My hands clenched at my sides. Elena.
Always
Elena. “Did you even see me skate?”

“Of course. I saw the whole thing. You were amazing.”

“I was freaking out before I went on. I needed you and you weren’t there. You knew I was going to be a nervous wreck.”

“But you skated great. You didn’t need me.” Sergei squeezed my shoulders. “You did it all on your own just like I knew you could. I’m so proud of you.”

I swiped at a runaway tear and stared up at him. Indeed, I had found strength without his help. I’d teetered on the edge of disaster and pulled myself up. Was that another sign Elena needed him more than I did?

“I have to get changed,” I said and slipped away from Sergei, taking long breaths to compose myself.

When I reached the locker room, Liza noticed me, unlike earlier. She paused while untying her skate laces, and she watched me with her puffy eyes as I walked across the room and sat beside her.

“You were so good.” She cocked her head to one side. “Why were you crying?”