Walk on Water (23 page)

Lexa filled the dishwasher to capacity before resorting to washing by hand. She and Beth finished at the same time.

“Perfect!” Beth exclaimed. “I’m just going to set the table and get cleaned up before Weston arrives.” She gave Lexa’s outfit a once-over. “You might want to change too.”

“He’s seen me dripping sweat in ripped tights,” Lexa objected. “Jeans will be a big improvement.”

“It’s a holiday,” Beth said, closing the matter.

Upstairs, Lexa went back to her history essay, aimlessly moving commas around before shutting the laptop again. The sun had broken through the clouds, making the snow sparkle. There would be hours of daylight left after turkey. She could still show up at Blake’s. . . .

Sighing, she left the window and took a shower, then dressed in her nicest pants and a lace-trimmed top. She was brushing out her hair when the doorbell rang.

“Weston’s here!” Beth trilled.

Down in the entryway, Beth was hanging Weston’s overcoat while he stood to one side holding a bottle of champagne. He looked desperately out of his element in a corduroy blazer over a black turtleneck and corduroy slacks—basically, a whole lot of corduroy.

“Lexa!” he exclaimed, lighting up as she came down the stairs. “Happy Turkey Day!”

“Not if you’re our turkey,” she returned, grinning.

Handing the champagne to Beth, Weston fished in his jacket pocket. “I brought you something,” he said, pressing a small box into Lexa’s hands.

She accepted his offering with surprise. “A present? For Thanksgiving?”

“More just because I like you. Go ahead. Open it.”

Inside the box on a bed of white cotton lay a gleaming silver star. An inch across, its faceted surface caught the light and reflected it back like a field of diamonds.

“It’s a pin. Or you can wear it on a chain. But since you still wear your mom’s necklace, I thought you might prefer a pin. For now.”

Lexa’s hand went to the gold cross and skate around her neck, then gently touched the star. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

“It’ll look good under the lights,” he said with a wink. “Sparkle just like you do.”

“Are you saying I’m a star?”

“Better. You’re
my
star. I have big plans for you, girl. This is only the beginning.”

Lexa had been joking, but he was clearly sincere. The room blurred through sudden tears that rushed into her eyes.

“Whoa!” he said, rubbing her shoulder. “Are you crying? You know I think the world of you. You, me, Eric, your grandmom . . . the four of us are going to go far.”

“Here, here!” Beth agreed happily. “It’s sweet that you’re touched, though, kitten.”

Lexa nodded and sniffed back her tears. She
was
touched, but that wasn’t what had made her cry.

She was finally someone’s star. The words she had waited her whole life to hear had just snapped shut on her like a trap.

“Hey,” Ian said. “Can you pick me up?”

“In my car?” Lexa asked. “Now?” He’d barely texted since Halloween, which had made her even more confused about the nature of their relationship. Calling at first light on her only day off training and asking for a ride was definitely not romantic, though. “Did your Jeep break down or something?”

“Something. I’m in the Debbie’s Donuts on Blackthorn. Do you know where that is?” He gave her directions to a place way outside of town.

“I can’t come out there now. I’m behind on my assignments and my tutor will be here this afternoon. Can’t someone else pick you up?”

“I want to show you something. Just come, okay?”

Lexa was still irritated as she drove through Maplehurst’s gates, but excitement was starting to win out. There was no denying that a mystery outing with Ian beat chemistry for Clara at least five different ways. She hummed along to the radio while a light snow dusted her windshield, each flake visible as it rushed toward slushy doom on the glass.

“Can you believe it’s the first of December?” the DJ asked. “I’m still eating leftover turkey and it’s time to start decking the halls. Well, you know what they say: If you can’t beat them. . . .”

“It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” began playing through the speakers. Lexa changed stations. She already had enough chaos in her life without thinking about Christmas. She drove through Ashtabula and into the outskirts on its other side, becoming increasingly anxious about how much time the trip was taking. She finally found Debbie’s Donuts, just off the highway alongside a stop sign, a gas station, and nothing else.

Pulling into the pot-holed parking lot, she spotted Ian at a table just inside the window. He jumped up at the same moment, hurrying out with two to-go cups and a paper bag. His breath formed clouds in the freezing air as he crossed to her Explorer.

“You made it! Here, hot chocolate.” Pushing one cup at her, he sank into the passenger seat and rattled his bag like a maraca. “Doughnut holes too. Let’s go.”

“Go where, exactly?” she asked, trying to sound more annoyed than she actually felt.

“Turn right on Blackthorn,” he said, pointing.

“That’s not my idea of exactly.” She turned the car around and pulled back onto the road anyway.

Blackthorn was a densely wooded lane aimed into the heart of nowhere. The pavement had been plowed within the past twenty-four hours, but the inch of snow that had fallen since made it hard to see. “Are we going to your car?” Lexa asked. “I don’t want to get stuck out here.”

“We are, and you won’t. I walked this road to get to Debbie’s. Here, have a doughnut hole.” He offered the open bag.

She hesitated, then plunged in her hand, unable to resist the dual temptations of grease and sugar. She was still chewing when Ian pointed to a barely noticeable gap between trees. “Turn there.”

The snow was deeper in that direction and the Explorer didn’t have four-wheel drive. She was about to object when her eyes caught a flash of red fifty feet in—Ian’s Jeep. Steering carefully along his packed tire tracks, she drove up behind him and prepared to cut her engine.

“No, park beside me,” he directed.

“I’d rather stop where I know I won’t get stuck.”

“It’s not deep. I checked.”

She could see that he had. Dense fir branches had collected more snow than they’d allowed to sift to the ground, and Ian’s boots had punched holes all through that thin layer. Sighing, she rolled her car up next to his. “If we’re jumping your battery, you’d better have cables and know how to use them. Those things scare me to death.”

He smiled and held out his bag. “Doughnut hole?”

She glared, then took a handful. Ian flipped the hood of his parka up over his red knit cap. “We’ll walk in from here,” he said. “I don’t want him to see us.”

“Don’t want
who
to see us?”

“Leave that hot chocolate in the car. You’ll probably want it when you get back.”

Lexa did as instructed, no longer needing to fake her irritation. She stomped down a narrow path behind him, the only thing marking their route a set of pre-existing footprints. Wherever they were was deserted. All she could hear was crunching snow and the sharp intake of her own breath.

Up ahead, the trees ended abruptly. She could see beyond them to the frozen surface of Lake Erie. A few more steps and Blake’s black pickup came into view, parked way down the shore to her right. “What the—” she began.

Shushing her with a gloved finger, Ian directed her gaze out onto the lake. A lone figure was skating on a patch of clear ice, a bundled silhouette against a field of white. Lexa gasped.

“He’s ba-ack,” Ian said. “Blades Walker rides again.”

His words barely registered—her entire attention was focused on Blake. He was wearing ear buds beneath his cap, his eyes half closed as he skated to music only he could hear. His trademark deep edges flowed without the boards of a rink to confine them, cutting a serpentine swath down the lake. Lexa drew back into the trees enough to make sure he couldn’t see her. “Why here? Why not at his own rink?”

“I’m guessing this is a huge secret. It was a fluke that I found out, and he doesn’t know I’m onto him. I’ve been debating for a couple of weeks whether or not to tell—”

She waved a hand to end his explanation. Blake was building speed into a jumping pass.

Mohawk, rocker, Choctaw . . . there was no empty gliding in Blake’s approaches. Every beat was filled, every motion precise. As he rose up into a double lutz, Lexa caught her breath. She had seen this exact pass before, hundreds of times. Her father was skating one of his old programs with Kaitlin.

Her knees buckled, dropping her onto a snowy log as Blake turned slow rotations where the star lift should have been, his empty hands clenched at his sides. Lexa’s hands clenched as well, as if together they could somehow squeeze Kaitlin back into being. It was thrilling to see her father on skates for the first time . . . and heartbreaking to imagine what must be going on in his head.

“I’m gonna go,” Ian said softly. “You can find your way back to your car?”

Lexa nodded as Blake pushed into an off-balance spin that should have been half of a pairs camel. She was alone in the trees before he made his last rotation. She hated herself for spying, but she couldn’t look away. The story of their lives was being laid out on that lonely ice, all of the things Blake refused to say expressed in his every move. His pain was obvious, but instead of letting it paralyze him the way it had for nearly sixteen years, he was moving through it, every stroke, every turn a visible act of will. He wasn’t the skater he had been—not after so little practice and probably never again—but he was trying to be
something
again, something more than the wreck of an ex-champion who’d traded in his blades for broken-down Sorels.

Lexa leaned into his turns and drew herself up with his jumps, skating every move with him. There were flashes of Blake’s former brilliance. Then, just as quickly, the fire fled, leaving him stumbling through a simple three-turn. He was tiring. She read his exhaustion in the tightness of his shoulders and the wobble of his knees, but somehow he found the breath to carry on, fighting for the end of the program.

This is why he quit smoking,
she realized as he turned a slow sit spin where Walker and Walker’s death spiral had been. Even with the substitutions and missing lifts, simply making it to the end of that program was a major accomplishment. To spin so low on a screaming thigh was practically heroic.

Tears filled Lexa’s eyes as Blake battled back up to standing and took his closing position. Suddenly, he looked lost out there, as if with the end of the music he’d awoken in a strange room. He pivoted slowly, blinking in apparent confusion. Then he hung his head and she finally understood that he was crying too.

He more shuffled than skated off the lake. She watched him high-step through the snow to his truck and jump into the driver’s seat. As the door slammed shut behind him, his head disappeared, dipping down below the glass.

He’s taking off his skates,
she guessed.
A warm seat out of the wind . . . I’d do it in there too.

The mercury had dropped even lower while she’d been outside, and the clouds that had spit snow earlier were gearing up to dump. She stood to leave, then hesitated, waiting for Blake to pop back up. She could have taken off three pairs of skates in the time he’d been out of sight.

What’s he doing? Is he okay?
The questions propelled her feet forward without a conscious decision to move. Blake had just skated to his physical limit after years of abusing his health, and he wasn’t that young anymore.

Do people his age have heart attacks?

Abandoning her hiding place, Lexa burst out of the trees and rushed toward the truck. Snow rose to her knees as her boots broke through its crust and wobbled on the rocks and roots underneath. A distance she could have run in a summer minute stretched impossibly long as his head still didn’t reappear.

She first made out the curve of his back through the distant driver’s side window. Blake was slumped into the passenger seat, facedown. She was still twenty feet away when he sat up abruptly, a bright pink pillow clutched to his face.

She froze. Her father was sobbing into the pillow, completely unaware of her presence. His shoulders shook and heaved as he buried his face in the pink fabric. Except . . .

A sickening rush of recognition rocked Lexa back onto her heels. That was no pillow. Blake was crying into Kaitlin’s pink parka, the one in all the photographs. The one she’d been wearing the day she died.

He took another shuddering breath, pressing the parka hard to his face. With a clarity that made her weak, Lexa realized what he was doing. He was trying to breathe in Kaitlin’s scent. Her perfume, maybe. Her sweat. Her skin.

Blake wasn’t ill.

But he wasn’t all right.

For the first time Lexa understood the profound difference in the grief they shared. Kaitlin’s death had cost her the chance to know her mother. Blake had lost who he was.

When you get your heart broken that badly, you must also grieve yourself,
she realized,
the person you were before the loss and can never be again.

Kaitlin and Blake had both died that day. Blake had just gone on living.

Backing rapidly through her footsteps, Lexa turned and ran for the tree line, tears freezing on her cheeks. She wasn’t supposed to have seen this, she knew.

At that moment it was hard to believe she would ever see anything else.

“You’re so lucky!” Jenni said. “You have hardly anyone to shop for!”

“That seems lucky to you?” Lexa asked, an edge in her voice.

“Yes! No. I just meant—” Jenni glanced away in frustration, over the tinsel-decked railing to the ground floor of the packed mall. “I’m going to be completely broke is all. Nobody likes being broke.” Then, miraculously, “Sorry.”

Lexa nodded, not trusting her voice. Ever since she’d seen her father sobbing into her dead mother’s coat, she’d been walking around with a permanent lump in her throat.

“Look at that mob.” Jenni pointed down to a snaking line of parents and children waiting to see Santa Claus. The mall had erected a throne-like chair in front of a candy-cane-covered gingerbread cottage—more Hansel and Gretel than North Pole. “Half of those kids will probably cry when they finally get up there, too.”