Icarus

young.' She nodded and he could see her entire face tighten and her eyes go hard.

He could hear Kid, right here on the terrace, saying: There was an accident when she was a kid. That's all it was. At least that's all I'm gonna tell you.

Jack staggered forward, one small step, forcing his feet away from the pull of the edge. He forced himself to look down, decided to focus on the table. It was important to focus on something, important to concentrate on something safe, so he stared at the tray. First he took in all the accoutrements, then made himself take in the specifics. The deep-blue color of the plates. The roughness of the bread. The pale waxiness of the cheese. And then the knife. The beautiful knife with the finely honed blade and thick dark wood handle. The butcher knife that he knew so well.

Dom's knife.

'Where…' he whispered. 'Where did you get that?'

She looked down at the knife. Said: 'In the kitchen.' She picked it up by the handle, held it in front of her, the blade catching a streak of sunlight and glistening. 'It was sitting on the counter.'

'No.' Jack's breath came quickly and hard. He focused on her bare leg now, lifting his head so he could see the long, jagged scar that ran from the middle of Grace's right thigh up to her hip.

Kid's voice: An accident… that's all it was… But she's definitely still scarred by it. Sexily scarred.

'The Murderess.'

'Let me explain.'

'You're the Murderess,' he said. Staring at his friend's knife, still fighting the fear, the wind that was whistling only in his head, and the image of his body, leaping, falling, dying, he screamed at her: 'Who else did you kill!'

'You have to believe me,' she said. 'It was an accident. It has nothing to do with today, with what's happening.'

'I have to get off the balcony,' he said.

'No,' she told him. 'I know you're frightened. But if you stay here you'll listen. I don't care if I have to force you to listen, but you have to listen.'

His voice came out raspy. 'Have to go in.'

But she barred the door. He didn't have the strength to push her aside. When the vision came, when the fear took over, there was never any strength left. 'I was fourteen,' she was saying. 'Fourteen years old. Just a little girl, wanting to be a cheerleader. And my best friend, Kara, she was trying out, too. And you know how important that is to a little girl. Well, it came down to me and Kara. We heard that only one of us would make it, and we made a pact that no matter who won, we'd always be best friends. And…'

Jack was trying to focus on what she was saying. Fighting the edge, struggling against the pull and trying to understand. Grace took a deep breath. 'And,' she continued, 'on a Saturday, two days before we were going to find out which one of us made it, we were on Long Island, where we lived…' The words were painful to her. They were coming very slowly. 'We snuck out. Told our parents we were biking to the library. But we biked to the train station and we were sneaking into the city. A last celebration before one of us didn't get what we'd both worked so hard to get.'

What was she talking about? What did this have to do with the knife in her hand and the bloody body of Samsonite lying on the bed next to him and the girl in the bathtub with the needle in her arm?

'Only… before the train came,' she was saying now, 'we started talking. Kidding around. Pretending we would do anything to win. People were listening and they heard what we were saying, and it sounded awful but we were only joking, we were really only joking. And she pushed me and I pushed her back. And we started wrestling…' Grace was crying now. Not silent tears but slow and difficult sobs. She was trying to hold them back so her words came out in bursts and gasps. 'And,' she said. 'Oh, God, and I gave her a shove but we were too close to the tracks…'

I remember this, Jack thought. Why do I remember? Why is this familiar?

'She fell right in front of the train as it was pulling in. I tried to save her, people saw me, I jumped down after her and tried to pull her up. But I couldn't and then the train was too close and I panicked. I pulled myself up, I gave her up and let her die. I didn't make it all the way, the train caught my leg, almost severed it. But it was saved. And that's what this scar is. My reminder, every single day, of what happened.'

He could see it all now: The newspaper headlines from fifteen years ago. The local tabs leaping on the story and blaring it as their lead: GIRL KILLS FRIEND TO MAKE CHEERLEADING SQUAD. It was a scandal and everyone was talking about it, writing about it: How could this happen? Is there too much pressure in schools? What's happening to children today? But the name was wrong. The name was so famous for those weeks, it was like the Amy Fisher thing, people made horrible jokes, but the name was wrong…

'Remember,' he breathed. 'The name… not your name…'

'I changed my name,' Grace said. The crying had stopped and she was calm. The sobs seemed to have exhausted her. 'After she died, you can't imagine what it was like. The police cleared me, I was innocent, they understood what happened, that it was an accident, but everyone else – the kids in my school, Kara's parents; oh, God, Kara's parents, they lived on the block and it was so horrible… It was in all the papers, on TV… People thought I killed my best friend so I could be a goddamn cheerleader. My parents had to move, my father quit his job, I left school… You can't imagine. So I changed my name.'

Grace Lerner. That was the name. He remembered: Grace Lerner!

'No one ever knew. When I moved into the city, I was Grace Childress; that was my mother's maiden name. No one knew who I was and I could go back to being a normal person. I never told anyone. Until Kid. We used to talk about everything and I trusted him, and you can't imagine the burden of carrying it around with me, no one knowing, so it just came out one day. I told him the whole story. I guess that's when he changed my nickname from the Rookie,' she said. 'That prick.'

He could see her clenching the knife. As she talked, her grip got tighter and tighter.

'Afterward, I hated that I told him. Sometimes I couldn't sleep, knowing that someone knew.'

Jack looked up. Saw a movement behind her. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, thought maybe he was hallucinating. But it was real, all right. It was amazingly, blessedly real. Keep her talking, he thought. Keep her talking now, just a few seconds more…

'That's why you killed him,' he said.

She looked stunned. Shocked that he had said it out loud. 'No.' She shook her head violently. 'Is that what you think?' When he nodded, she said, 'No! It just meant he could talk to me. It's why he came and told me what he told me. How afraid he was. He trusted me because he knew I'd trusted him. The way I'm trusting you now. I just want you to understand why I didn't call the police. I was with him the night he died. I left my party to go there. I'm the woman you've been looking for. But I left before anything happened. I did, Jack, you've got to believe me. I left, but later I came back to tell him I'd made a mistake, that it was all over, for real this time, but when I got there he was dead. I saw him on the street and… I couldn't tell you. I knew you were looking for me but I couldn't tell you. Or that sergeant. I couldn't face more publicity, I couldn't imagine living through that again. But I didn't kill anyone.'

'Dom's knife,' Jack said.

'I told you. I found it in the kitchen! I don't understand what-'

But Jack didn't wait to find out what she didn't understand. He looked behind her and said, 'Get Dom's knife.'

She whirled and Bryan was right behind her now, he'd crept up on her, so light on his feet, and he grabbed her wrist. Jack heard the crack and Grace's quick scream, and Bryan had the knife. He'd taken it away from her. Held it in front of him, an expression of wonder on his face.

'She killed him,' Jack said. 'She killed Kid and the others.'

'No!' Grace screamed. 'You can't think that! Jack, after last night, you can't think that!'

Jack stumbled forward, away from the wall. He grabbed hold of the table and the world stopped spinning around him. He felt the pull of the wall recede and Grace's story began to echo now inside him. He saw the look of pain deep in her eyes as she held her broken wrist. He saw the look of fear as she stared at Bryan behind her. Jack started to take a step toward Bryan, to thank him, but he stopped short. Looked up and said to Kid's friend, in a voice that was low and terrible, 'How did you get in here?'

'It's time for our session,' Bryan said. 'Did you forget?'

'I didn't ask that,' Jack said. 'I asked how you got into my apartment.'