Her hand lifted in a wave as she set out down the walk, and I paused at the screen door, as she ambled along the sidewalk, adjusting the volume of her iPod, her head swinging in time to the beat.
Our gorgeous girl had a brother. Biologically, at least. What else he might be to her was still up in the air, but Emma would be fascinated by the news initially and then the questions would come, rapid-fire and endless. She knew full well what year we’d been married, and she’d always been too perceptive for her own good. After all, she’d picked up on the weird vibe between Michael and me this morning, even if she hadn’t interpreted its cause correctly.
Michael touched my arm, and I turned to face him. Part of me wanted the comfort of burying my head in his shoulder, but another part of me longed to crawl into bed alone for a few days and hide.
“We’ll talk to her tonight,” he said. His dark hair was sticking up in spikes over his forehead, and in my mind’s eye I could see him standing in the kitchen, running a hand through his hair restlessly, wondering if he should join me. I knew him inside and out. That hadn’t changed, either—so it was even more surprising that he didn’t understand how imperative it was that we talk first.
“I’m not sure what there is to tell her yet,” I argued, slipping away from him and returning to the kitchen. The pale wood floor was warm; early sunlight had flooded the window over the sink.
“I’m going to talk to him today.” Michael caught my wrist before I could pick up my mug. “I arranged to call him at lunchtime. There are things I want to hear from him, too.”
I let him pull me against his chest, and I breathed in the clean scent of his shirt, and the spicier smell of his skin beneath it. With his arms around me, and his heartbeat the steady, comforting rhythm of a clock beneath my cheek, the rest of the world receded for a minute, as it always had.
“I’ll call you after I speak to him,” he murmured into my hair, and I nodded. “And then we can decide what to tell Emma, and everyone else.”
When he’d gone, gunning the old Volvo out of the driveway to make his train into Manhattan, I carried my tea onto the front porch, letting the screen door slam behind me once Walter, our aging beagle, had settled into a square of sunlight with a grunt. I had dozens of things to do, but my mind refused to focus on anything other than the fact of Drew Keating’s existence.
My fingers itched to dial Lucy’s number at her office, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was nearly impossible to get her on the phone lately, and we resorted to brief, flying e-mails more often than not, but that wasn’t the reason for my hesitation. Since junior high, Lucy had been my willing ear, my shoulder to cry on, but spilling this particular story seemed like a betrayal when even Emma didn’t yet know about her half brother.
As much as I would have welcomed Lucy’s voice on the other end of the line, what I really wanted was reassurance. Someone to reassure me that I had nothing to worry about, that I hadn’t taken Michael’s love for granted, that nothing about our life together was going to change. The problem was, there was every chance that Lucy would disagree.
DANCING BALLET PROFESSIONALLY requires an incredible amount of dedication, concentration and talent. I had all three, according to my teachers, but after ten years of training, and four summers spent at the New York City Ballet’s prestigious School of American Ballet, what I didn’t have was luck. I’d fallen during a rehearsal, thanks to an ill-timed jump into Jared Farmer’s arms, and smashed my right knee into pieces, quite literally, as I landed on the floor.
Everything I’d dreamed of, everything I’d worked for, was over in that moment, and I realized it even as I lay sprawled on the gritty studio floor. The pain was a blinding starburst, hot and relentless, like nothing I’d ever felt. My knee wouldn’t move—what had once been solid seemed to be a handful of dust now, and my lower leg a useless length of bone, my foot dangling from it like an afterthought in its scuffed pointe shoe.
Now, I barely remember the round of doctors’ appointments and consultations, the surgery and the recuperation. What I remember is the awful feeling of loss, and of being lost. I had nothing to focus on for the first time. For years, every free moment of my life had been occupied with dance. Studying my idols, training, practicing, living, eating and breathing ballet. It wasn’t a distant spot on the horizon; it was the here and now, packing lamb’s wool into my pointe shoes, washing my leotards, stretching my rebellious muscles every morning, absorbing Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev and Stravinsky until I could hear the violins humming and swelling in my sleep.
Meeting Michael was what saved me. From what, I’m not sure—depression doesn’t sound melodramatic even if self-destruction does. But as intently as I turned my eyes and my heart to him, I found that I was the focus of someone else’s fascination, and it felt good.
By the end of that day at the beach, Michael had asked about everything from my family and friends to what I dreamed about at night. He wanted to know if I’d ever cut my hair, which fell halfway down my back, and if I liked white peaches. He was fascinated by my knowledge of classical music—at least, the ballet-appropriate pieces—and he’d made me list everywhere my family had ever been on vacation. He wanted to know what my room looked like, if I slept on my stomach or my back and what I ate first thing in the morning.
As odd as it may seem, we didn’t have anything to do but talk that day and walk up and down the shoreline, our feet splashing in the salty tide. And it was incredibly freeing. In those hours, I didn’t have to think about the gaping hole in my life. Michael was filling it in with his interest in me.
It didn’t escape Lucy’s notice, either. “You’re in love with being loved,” she said two weeks later, when I’d disentangled myself from Michael long enough to join her in Cath’s pool. She was hanging on to the side, kicking her feet out behind her in lazy swipes, and her wet hair was slicked back from her face.
I swam away from her, stung. Michael was flipping through a magazine on a lounge chair just a dozen feet away, his eyes shaded behind a pair of dark sunglasses and his chest pink with sun.
“That’s…well, mean. And not true,” I said, paddling over to the concrete lip and tossing back my own soaked hair.
“Really?” She shook her head, shrugging. She was squinting in the fierce afternoon sun, her nose wrinkled in disapproval, each freckle standing out like a polka dot. “What is it you like about him other than how he’s completely obsessed with you?”
“You’re out of line, Lucy.” I managed to keep my voice steady as I said it, but my heart had squeezed into a tight fist. I didn’t want to fight, but I wasn’t going to listen to her accuse me of something she understood nothing about.
I was flattered by Michael’s interest, and I knew it even then, but I was also pleased by it because I’d fallen so hard for him. There were plenty of things I liked about him, not that I was about to spout off a list for Lucy’s benefit. He was smarter than any boy I’d ever dated, for one thing, and he was gentle and funny and kind, but there were a million little quirks that wouldn’t have mattered to anyone who wasn’t in love with him. The way his fingers were shaped. The way his left eyebrow was slightly crooked. The way he ate Oreos, around and around the edges until he swallowed the middle in one gulp. The fact that he was an awful swimmer but could run for miles without losing his breath. The short stories he’d written and collected in a plain spiral-bound notebook. The way he always carried a book with him wherever he went.
That he liked me was only one reason among the dozens I mused over as I lay in bed at night, and the idea that he’d given me something to do other than brood all summer didn’t occur to me at all until Lucy mentioned it.
It was rude and blunt of her to say it, but there are moments now when I wonder if she was wrong.
That summer was gorgeous from the beginning, just hot enough, lush and sweet scented. The old trees that lined the streets were thick with leaves, gardens had bloomed early, and every few blocks