“After the service, I couldn’t sleep, so I snuck out of my room to watch TV—volume turned low so I wouldn’t wake up my father or brother. And the Calgary ice dance final was on.”
Katarina looks at the photograph of Sheila on the stand beside her.
“I saw Sheila win her second gold medal, and she was so strong, so confident, so completelyperfect,I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her strength gave me strength, when I needed it the most. The next morning, I asked my dad for skating lessons.”
Cut to the Lins again. Garrett is crying. Bella’s face remains unreadable. Only Heath’s hand is in the shot, his fingers making slow circles on Bella’s shoulder.
“When I was older, I was lucky enough to train with Sheila Lin for several years. I thought I wanted to be exactly like her. But the truth is…”
Katarina’s voice breaks, and she blinks away tears. Cut to a close-up of Heath, who watches her with hard, unblinking eyes.
“I don’t think I ever really knew her,” Katarina says. “Maybe no one did. Here’s what I do know about Sheila: she was a gold medalist and a devoted mother and a successful businesswoman. And she was the most ruthless, calculating person I ever met.”
A few gasps and murmurs of dismay from the crowd. Katarina keeps going.
“She changed my life for the better, and she also tried to ruin it on multiple occasions. She was strong—she had to be, to survive our fucked-up sport—but that’s not all she was. She could be weak. She could be cruel. She could behuman,no matter how much she tried to hide it.”
Another shot of Bella, closer this time. A single tear tracks down her cheek. She wipes it off with a flick of her fingertips.
“Sheila Lin wasn’t perfect,” Katarina says. “But she was a champion.”
Chapter 66
Despite what you may have heard, my speech at Sheila Lin’s funeral wasn’t planned.
Until the whole crowd swiveled to stare at me, I didn’t even realize I’d stood up and volunteered to speak. I had no idea what to say. I barely recall what Ididsay.
I remember squinting into the sun, gripping my glasses to keep my hands from shaking, sweat creeping down my spine under my black dress.
And the way Bella and Heath looked at me. She seemed hostile at first—muscles tensed, dreading the scene I was surely about to cause—but as I spoke, she softened. When I stepped away from the podium, she gave me a nod of acknowledgment, so swift and subtle I thought I might have imagined it.
Heath, though—he stayed so still, he could have been another monument in the cemetery. I felt his eyes on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to meet them. I was afraid of what I’d see—pure loathing, smug satisfaction. Or worst of all, total indifference.
I left Hollywood Forever without saying another word to anyone and changed my flight so I could leave LA as soon as possible. By the time the plane lifted off the tarmac, my visit to California already felt like a strange dream.
That was it, I figured. I would never see Heath or the Lins again.
I returned to my solitary life in Illinois. Weeks passed, every day the same as the last—until a blizzard swept through overnight, brushing a coat of glittering white over everything.
The next morning, I walked out my front door and found Bella Lin standing in the snow.
—
Bella was dressed all in white, and she looked so much like her mother, for a moment I thought I’d been visited by a ghost.
“Hi,” she said. The compact car behind her was white too, nearly invisible against the snowdrifts and the pale cloud cover.
I walked down the icy steps, stopping on the final tread. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the area.”
She’d been at the U.S. National Championships, which were held in Omaha that year—at least a six-hour drive. Even for Midwesterners, calling thatin the areawas pushing it.
“What are you really doing here, Bella?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“You just saw me at the funeral.”