“Didn’t you see? I fixed everything, Miranda, just like I said I would before the show. It worked. Just like the baths, like when I healed you.”
“What do you mean ‘it worked’？”
Just then there’s a playful knock on the door.
“Ellie?” a voice calls in a song.
And I know the voice. Of course I do. The voice whose former shrillness used to make fire of my nerves, concrete of my leg. The voice whose impossible lightness used to mock my authority, my pain. The voice that of late has sounded like a husk of itself, now back to its former full-bodied pitch. Except there’s a new gravity to it. A new richness that I don’t recognize. I turn to look at her there in the doorway, her face no longer sickly but rosy and smiling and framed by her burnished hair. No longer dressed as the King but as herself. But it’s a different self. Not the shrill girl in bell sleeves. Nor the shrunken shell in hospital-gown blue who hissed witch and dragged her dead leg, my dead leg, across the stage while sipping Ellie’s water bottle. This glowing girl, standing straight in the doorway, not breathing through her mouth, smiling at Ellie like they’re actual friends, is someone else.
“Ellie,” Briana says, “there you are.”
She crosses the room toward Ellie like Ellie is her lighthouse, her beacon, her best friend. She doesn’t limp, nor does she move with the thoughtless lightness that would have made my eyes smart to behold in former times. Instead she crosses the room with a new heavy grace. Like she understands what a true gift it is to walk without pain, to walk at all. It is a gift, that’s what her steps say. I must tread carefully, gratefully, I must tread from hereafter with deep thanks.
I watch her come up to Ellie and kiss her on her pallid cheek. She places a hand on Ellie’s shoulder.
“Ellie,” she says, with her new rich voice, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Ellie looks at her like this news does not surprise her. Of course Briana, a girl who never once in three years acknowledged her existence, would be looking for her everywhere.
“Oh,” Ellie says, “I’ve just been sitting with Miranda.”
At last Briana turns to look at me. Her leaf-green eyes have returned to their former brightness but there are shadows among the leaves now. They’ve glimpsed death, the dark precipice. They gaze at my tablecloth toga, the fork in my hair.
“Ms. Fitch,” she says, “that was quite a fall.”
“Yes,” I say.
“I thought for sure you’d die. But you’re alive. I’m glad,” she says hesitantly.
“Thank you,” I say. I look at her standing straight before me. “You look well.”
“Yes.” She looks at Ellie and smiles at her like she is the sun. She puts her arm around Ellie’s pale shoulder, which immediately goes red at her touch.
“Maybe the stage was what I needed after all,” she says to Ellie, who is biting on her grin, who is looking at me like, You see, Miranda? Didn’t I tell you that I would right things? That I would fix things just like I broke them?
“Theater heals, I guess.”
“Yes. Isn’t that what you always say, Miranda?” Ellie prompts. “That theater heals?”
“I do,” I say. I’ve never said that.
I watch Briana tug on Ellie’s hand. “We’re taking off to celebrate. Are you coming with?”
“Oh, I should stay with Miranda. At least until Grace gets back. But I’ll catch up with you, all right?” Briana kisses Ellie again, says an awkward goodbye to me, then leaves. But I don’t hear her words to me or Ellie’s words to her because all I can hear is the word Grace. Echoing in the void of my body. Grace, Grace, Grace.
“Grace,” I whisper. I look at Ellie smiling at me and steel myself. Deep breath. “Ellie,” I say, “Grace is dead.”
“What? No, Miranda, Grace is here. She gave us all notes after the show. She was so helpful. She’s—”
“I killed her. Did you hear me, Ellie? I killed Grace. I tried to undo it, to take it back, but I couldn’t, it was too late.” When I say these words, the dam breaks. Tears flood my eyes as I gaze at Ellie, who is looking at me not with horror, but with pity.
“Oh, Miranda,” she says, “you really have had quite a fall, haven’t you?”
“Well, look who’s back from the dead,” Grace says from the door. Grace standing at the door in her hunting vest. Grace half smiling at me like I never left her for dead. Grace holding the champagne I had delivered to her home and two plastic cups. Grace looking at me with kindness, saying, “It looks like someone could use a drink.”