Chapter 4: A Friend Cannot Carry the Risk

Nora’s POV

Emily texted at 7:40.

Come before nine. The schedule’s up. And don’t tell me you’re not hungry. I’ll know you’re lying.

I reached the rink at 8:36, with my résumé in a folder on the passenger seat.

The building stood behind an auto body shop. Four cars occupied the eleven parking spaces.

The boy at reception barely looked up.

“Learn-to-skate registration’s online.”

“I’m here for Emily.”

“Double doors. She’s the loud one.”

She was waiting by the boards with two coffees. She handed me one, then took a proper look at me.

“You look like hell.”

“Long week.”

Her hair was shorter than I remembered. I almost said something about it, grateful for an ordinary thing to talk about, but she was already reaching for my folder.

“Come on. Let me show you what we’ve got.”

She left the folder in the office and took me down to the far end of the rink, where a man in a sweatshirt was dragging a hose across the ice.

“Six fifteen to seven forty-five. Twelve beginners. Two cry every week. One bites, and his mother says he’s expressing himself.”

I smiled before I could help it.

“Then the eight o’clock bridge class. Six kids who can skate backward but haven’t quite grasped stopping.”

“What’s the pay?”

“Twenty-two an hour. Nine hours a week, if the budget holds. It hasn’t held since March.” She took a drink. “Private lessons are thirty per half hour. You manage your own bookings. Some parents tip. Usually the ones who complain.”

A hundred and ninety-eight dollars a week. About eight hundred and sixty a month before taxes, without private lessons.

I tried to imagine paying rent with that.

“I’ll take it.”

“You haven’t asked about the ice.”

“I can work with the ice.”

Emily laughed. Then she looked at the coffee in her hands.

“When will your paperwork clear?”

“Margaret said to allow six weeks. Nine if the background check gets held up.”

“Nine.”

She rolled the cup between her palms.

“All right. And things at home?”

Fine nearly came out.

“I’ve spoken to a divorce lawyer.”

Emily put her coffee on the boards.

“Oh.”

“Nothing’s been filed.”

She looked across the rink.

“Nora.”

I stopped warming my hands around the cup.

“What?”

“The board meets on the fourteenth. I was going to put the hire through then. The manager’s out until the twenty-second, so right now, apparently, I’m the entire chain of command.”

She gave a short laugh. I didn’t join in.

“We have a foundation grant. For the winter youth program. Forty thousand dollars. Fifty-two with the planning money.”

“Which foundation?”

She looked at me.

I knew before she said it.

“Caldwell.”

I set my coffee down carefully.

“I’ve been working on that grant since October,” she said. “I can’t put your name in front of the board while they’re writing thank-you letters to your husband’s foundation.”

“Has anyone told you not to hire me?”

“No. But I have forty kids and three coaches. One of them’s nineteen. If the funding goes, I can’t keep the program running.”

At the far end, the man lifted the hose over a ridge in the ice.

“Does the grant pay salaries?”

Emily frowned.

“What?”

“The forty thousand. Does it cover staff?”

“Ice time. Buses. Rental skates that half the children never return.”

“Then my wages wouldn’t come out of it.”

“No.” She rubbed the edge of the cup lid. “But I still have to go back to them next year.”

I waited. She didn’t take it back.

“I’d like my folder,” I said. “And an email confirming the position’s no longer available to me.”

“Nora, please.”

“I need to keep looking, Emily. Otherwise, I’ll leave three mornings free in case you call.”

“I might still—”

“I can’t afford to.”

She went to the office.

When she returned, she held the folder against her chest for a moment before giving it to me. A page and a half. Six years I hadn’t known how to explain.

“I wanted this to work,” she said. “When you called, I was already figuring out which mornings.”

“I know.”

“Maybe in the spring, once this funding cycle closes.”

I tucked the folder under my arm.

“It’s Thursday. I need work now.”

At the door, she put her hand on my shoulder. I let it stay there until she lowered it.

The boy at reception was watching a video with the sound off.

Outside, I put the folder on the passenger seat and sat behind the wheel without starting the engine.

I kept thinking about how quickly I’d said yes.

Eventually, I drove back to Vivienne’s.

At seven thirty, I called Sophie.

She held the phone too close. I could see her chin, then the tape above her eyebrow, before she moved it back.

“Mom. Look.”

Her splint rested on a pillow. In her good hand was a crooked pipe-cleaner figure with tissue paper wrapped around its middle.

“A skater,” I said.

“Look at the skirt. Three layers. One looked like a broom.”

She turned it to show me the back.

“Aunt Serena said blue should go outside, but I wanted pink. She said it’s my skater, so I can.”

“I like the pink.”

“Yours has to be blue. I picked it already.”

She placed the figure on the bed with more care than she usually gave her toys.

“Now you make yours.”

“I don’t have pipe cleaners here, sweetheart.”

“Buy some.”

“I’ll get them tomorrow. Then I’ll make it, and you can tell me what I got wrong.”

“No. Now.”

“I can’t make it tonight.”

“You always say later.”

Her voice rose.

“Aunt Serena doesn’t. She stays until I’m done.”

I looked at the time. We’d talked for twenty-two minutes.

It would be easy to say I’d find something. Bend a paper clip, tear up a napkin. Keep trying until she was happy with it.

I glanced at the unfinished application beside my laptop.

“I know you wanted to do it together tonight. We can do it tomorrow.”

“Don’t go.”

“I love you. I’ll call at seven thirty, like I promised.”

Her mouth pulled down. For a moment, she made no sound.

Then she began to cry.

“You never stay.”

My hand flattened against the table.

“I’m here, sweetheart. Let me talk to Dad before we say goodnight.”

“No.”

“Please put him on.”

The phone shifted. I heard the bedding scrape against it, then Ethan’s voice.

“She’s been asking for you all afternoon. She made you a pink one.”

“I saw.”

“You couldn’t give her another three minutes?”

I pressed my fingers against the table’s edge.

“She wants me to make one now. I don’t have the things.”

“So talk to her.”

“I have been talking to her.”

“She’s six, Nora.”

“I know.”

Sophie was still crying somewhere near him.

I nearly asked him to hand the phone back.

Instead, I said, “Please sit with her. Tell her I’ll have the materials tomorrow. I’m keeping that promise.”

He was quiet.

“What time?”

“Seven thirty. And please watch the late naps. If she sleeps after four, she’ll be awake half the night with her wrist.”

“I know her schedule.”

“You know when the flight leaves. I need you to know this, too.”

He didn’t answer. I let the silence sit.

“Goodnight, Ethan.”

“Goodnight.”

I put the phone facedown, then turned it over to make sure the call had ended.

Twenty-four minutes and eleven seconds.

I closed the screen before I could call back.

The second application was open on my laptop.

In an hour and fifty minutes, I’d written four hundred and six words. Three paragraphs said almost exactly the same thing.

I deleted one.

Vivienne came into the kitchen and set a glass of water beside my elbow. She didn’t ask about Emily. I was grateful enough for that to keep my eyes on the screen.

After she went to bed, I read the statement again.

I competed. I developed. I achieved.

I tried to write a sentence that began with I am.

At 9:47, my phone lit up with an unfamiliar number.

I let it ring four times before answering.

For a second, neither of us spoke.

“Are you in a kitchen?” a woman asked. “I can hear the refrigerator.”

“Who is this?”

“You know who it is.”

I did.

The last time I’d heard that voice, she’d been in the mixed zone, thanking a judge by name.

“What do you want, Celeste?”

“To ask you something. Hear me out, then hang up if you want.”

There was a noise behind her, a door opening, perhaps. Wind caught against the microphone.

“I have a girl at Northstar. Sixteen. She can rotate a triple in practice. In competition, she can barely commit to the takeoff. Five coaches have told her it’s in her head.”

“And you don’t agree.”

“I’ve watched four hundred hours of footage. No, I don’t.”

“Why are you calling me?”

“Her left shoulder drops before the takeoff in the short program. Barely half an inch. By the time her blade leaves the ice, the jump’s already gone wrong. They keep showing her the landing.”

I looked away from the application.

“Show me the approach.”

Celeste went quiet for a moment.

“That’s what I thought you’d say.”

I reached for the laptop and moved the application out of the way.

“Everyone watches where she falls,” Celeste said. “I need someone who’ll look at what happens before it.”

“Celeste—”

“Can you still see it, Nora?”

My fingers rested on the trackpad.

“Tell me you can. Then I’ll tell you the rest.”