Where The Ice Gives Way Chapter 67

**Blake**

I realise pretty quickly that neither of the twins plans on letting me go anywhere. Charlotte stays tucked beneath the blanket with her head resting on Charlie’s shoulder and her legs folded toward me. Every time I shift even slightly, Charlie’s eyes flick up like he’s keeping count of the inches between us. Theo catches it, too. He lifts his mug, looking far too amused for a man who’s barely said ten words in the last half hour. I nod once toward the kitchen, where Dad and John are still standing in a low, hushed conversation. Theo follows my look and rolls his eyes as if I’ve just handed him the worst job in the room. He lets out a long groan as he pushes himself out of the chair. “Right,” he mutters. “I’m going to go eavesdrop with purpose.” Theo heads off toward the kitchen, dragging a hand through his hair as he goes. Leaving me on one side of the couch and Charlie on the other. I glance over at Charlie, then back at Charlotte. This feels like the only chance I’m going to get. “Tell me about her,” I say quietly. Charlie’s eyes shift to mine. “What do you want to know?” I shrug once, keeping my voice low so it doesn’t carry across the room. “Anything.” My gaze drops back to her. “Everything.” He looks down at Charlotte then, and his mouth softens. For a long second, he just watches her sleep. Then he says, “She’s made for the ice.” His hand slides up once over the blanket near her shoulder, a small absent motion, and when he keeps talking, his voice has gone quieter.

“She’ll never admit it to anyone, but she is. Mum used to call her Snowflake.” A faint smile touches his mouth. “She’d drift around us on the ice so delicately. Every move was beautiful. You’d stand there freezing your arse off and still forget how cold you were because once she started moving, that was it. You watched.” I picture her on the lake. Her hair bright in the winter light. Her body cutting over the surface like she belonged there more than anywhere else. I know exactly what he means. Charlie lets out a small breath through his nose, almost a laugh, though there’s too much ache in it to really be one. “She was tiny and fearless. Mum would be teaching me one thing, and Lotty would already be halfway across the ice trying something she definitely shouldn’t have been trying yet.” That pulls a smile from me. “She fall much?”

“Oh, constantly.” His smile deepens for a second. “Then she’d get right back up and glare at the ice like she wasn’t going to let it beat her.” Charlie shifts against the couch, settling her a little more carefully against his shoulder before he keeps going. “Mum taught us both, but Charlotte...” He trails off. “With Charlotte, it was different. Mum used to say the ice listened to her.” I bet she loved them… “Dad thought it was rubbish,” Charlie says, glancing toward the kitchen. “Mum didn’t care. She’d just stand at the edge in her big coat with her gloves tucked under her arms and smile like she’d been right all along.” There’s so much warmth in the way he says *Mum* that I sit with it for a moment before I ask the next question.

“What happened to her?” I ask carefully. The smile leaves his face slowly, and he looks down at her first before he looks ahead at nothing. “We were six,” he says on an exhale. “It was a week before our seventh birthday.” Charlie swallows once, his jaw tightening, and when he speaks again, I can see every piece of it in my head. “Dad woke us up in the middle of the night. He was in a panic. I remember that part clear as anything. He came into our room and ripped the blankets back and told us to put our sleeping gowns and slippers on.” Charlie’s fingers curl into the blanket over Charlotte’s shoulder. “Everything felt fast… Loud. He was yelling, but I don’t think it was at us. I think he was yelling because he didn’t know what else to do… We were rushing to the car,” he says. “I remember the front door being open and Dad kept pushing us forward.” He stops there for a second as his throat works. “I never saw anything myself,” he says at last. “Dad made sure of that.” Charlie’s eyes drop to Charlotte again. “She told me once that she saw her.” The words come out in a whisper. “She said she couldn’t see much. Just Mum’s face on the floor behind the kitchen counter.” He stares ahead, but I can feel the picture sitting right there in front of him. “She said her eyes were open… but there was nothing left in them.”

Charlotte makes the faintest sound in her sleep, and Charlie’s hand moves over the blanket on instinct, settling her without ever breaking the thread of what he’s saying. “She grabbed Mum’s skates from beside the door before Dad pushed us outside.” His voice roughens at the edges. “Still had them clutched in her hands when we got in the car.” I feel the moment tear straight through me. Those must be the skates she wears… Charlie lets out a breath and leans his head back against the couch for a second, eyes closing briefly before he opens them again. “That was it,” he says. “No one ever explained anything. Dad never talked about it. Any time we brought Mum up after that, he’d get angry or sad, and then later he’d get drunk.” His mouth twists. “Then after a while we just... stopped bringing her up where he could hear.”

I look at Charlotte, her face soft with exhaustion, and I picture a little girl standing in a hallway in winter slippers with a pair of skates clutched to her body while her world split open around her. Charlie drags a hand over his face and looks at me with a half-broken smile. “She needs a new pair,” I say before I can stop myself. “She’ll fight you on that.” He laughs softly before he looks down at Charlotte. “She will always keep Mum’s,” he says quietly. “But it’d be nice to see her have something that’s just hers.” I hold his gaze and nod once. That is something I can do. It might not be much, but it’s something.

Charlotte sighs in her sleep and turns a fraction more toward me beneath the blanket. My hand shifts over the fabric near her shin without thinking, and Lex stirs again with a low, pleased rumble. *Ours to care for.* Then I lift my eyes to Charlie. “Thank you.” He shrugs, but his face has gone softer than I’ve ever seen it. “She deserves more people who care about her.” I decide then that I’m going to put something new on the ice beneath her feet. Something she can feel like a snowflake in again.