The Daddy Dance

by Mindy Klasky

  “Will you be my forever grown-up?”

  Kat’s throat swelled closed with the sudden threat of tears. “Forever is a very long time, Niffer. I can promise you this. You’ll never be left alone. You’ll have a grown-up to help you for as long as you need someone. Okay?”

  Niffer’s dark eyes were very serious, as if she were weighing every syllable of Kat’s vow. “Okay,” she said at last.

  As soon as they arrived at the ice-cream parlor, Niffer saw a friend, and she ran across the room, squealing with delight, their serious conversation completely forgotten. “Yikes,” Kat said to Rye as they took their place in line. “I had no idea how to respond to that!”

  Yikes, indeed, Rye thought. It had been everything he could do not to stop the truck right there in the parking lot. Not to turn to Kat and Niffer and make his confession. Not to tell them the whole truth, get the horrible weight off his chest, shed it from around his heart.

  Of course, he didn’t say anything. Niffer would only be confused by what he had to say. The child was fragile enough, without witnessing her aunt’s justified, unbridled rage. And Kat would—rightfully—be furious when she learned what had happened. And there was still a chance—a tiny one, but a chance nonetheless—that Rachel would tell him something different when he finally tracked her down, that she would have some other explanation, some proof.

  But there was something else. Something he had only just started to work out for himself.

  He didn’t want to lose Kat, didn’t want to miss out on her gorgeous smile, her easy companionship, the unrivaled excitement that she brought to their shared bed. Sure, they seemed great together. But she was heading back to New York soon, with or without Rye’s big confession. He was going to lose her to the big city, to her life with the ballet—there had never been any other possible ending for their story together. This reckless spring was going to be a memory, probably in a week, maybe less.

  Was it really so terrible to let Kat go without knowing the truth about him and Rachel? Was it the end of the world if she went back to her real life thinking fondly of Rye, of the time they had shared in Eden Falls?

  Everything would be different, of course, if he had any chance of keeping her with him. But Kat was never going to come live with him in Richmond. She’d never trim her wings and settle for a second-rate city. Not when she could have it all in New York. And he had absolutely no basis for building a business in Manhattan.

  It was only fair to Kat that he keep quiet—just for another week or two. Once she was safely in her real life, Rye would face the music. He’d step up and accept his responsibility, treat Niffer like his daughter, make sure that she was safe forever, that all her needs were met. There was just no need to make a formal acknowledgment now. No reason to ruin the short time that Kat had left in Eden Falls. This was a kindness to her. Really.

  Rye resolved to ignore the headache that started pounding behind his eyes as he ran through his justifications one more time.

  Niffer came skipping to the counter when they neared the front of the line. Kat was pleased to see that Rye had finally relaxed after the tension of Rachel’s no-show. He laughed as he ordered up Niffer’s mint chocolate chip, complete with the mandatory sprinkles and cherry. Rye’s own butter-pecan cone followed. He passed the ice cream to her so that he could pull his wallet out of his pocket.

  Maybe it was the fragrance of the butter-rich ice cream. Maybe it was the freshly made waffle cone. Maybe it was the bright sunshine outside, or the emotional dam she had just built for Niffer. But suddenly Kat found herself saying to the woman behind the counter, “And I’ll have a scoop of chocolate, please.”

  “Cone or cup?”

  Cup was safest. No more calories. No greater threat to her dancer fitness.

  But this was the first time she’d had ice cream in years. “Waffle cone, please.” Rye laughed and paid the total.

  “Aunt Kat!” Niffer said as they sat down at a tiny metal table. “You got ice cream!”

  “I couldn’t let you have all the fun, could I?” She licked her cone, and the ice cream melted across her tongue, cold and rich and satisfying. She laughed in pure enjoyment, marveling at the simple pleasure she had denied herself for so long. Niffer joined in, and Rye wasn’t far behind. Before long, Kat couldn’t even have said what was so funny. What was so perfect. All she knew was that this was living, this was embracing the world in a way that she had almost forgotten how to do.

  They finished their treats and walked back to the truck. Before Rye could open the door, a siren began to wail in the distance. Kat automatically looked around for the source, and she spotted a huge fire engine, barreling down the road. The deep horn boomed as the truck approached the intersection, making Niffer huddle against her hip. “It’s okay,” Kat said automatically. Nevertheless, she held her niece close until the truck had disappeared.

  “Hmm,” Kat mused, as Rye turned the key in the ignition. “That’s the first siren I’ve heard since I came to Eden Falls. Back in New York, I hear a dozen before breakfast.”

  “A dozen fire trucks?” Niffer asked.

  “Some fire trucks. And police cars and ambulances, too. You can hear the noise all day long. All night, too.” Even as Kat thought about it, she realized that her nights had been peaceful in Eden Falls. In fact, she routinely fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, and she slept so soundly that she couldn’t remember her dreams in the morning.

  Not like New York, at all. Back in the noisy apartment that she shared with Haley, she woke up nearly once an hour. If it wasn’t sirens, it was barking dogs, or screeching garbage trucks, or noisy people on the street, six floors below. Even when Kat did sleep in New York, she was disturbed by vivid dreams, by nightmares that jolted her awake as she imagined tumbling off a stage, or breaking her leg when her partner failed to catch her after some dramatic leap.

  Maybe that was why her foot had healed so fast here in Eden Falls. She was sleeping well for the first time in years.

  Speaking of which… “Okay, Niffer. As soon as we get home, I want you changing into your nightgown and brushing your teeth. Got it?”

  “Got it!” The little girl was already yawning as Rye pulled into the driveway.

  Kat took extra care tucking Niffer into bed. She smoothed the sheets carefully, folding them so that they weren’t too high on the child’s chest. She kissed Niffer on her forehead, switched on the night-light, told her to “Sleep tight!” She sat beside Niffer’s bed, watching as the little girl’s frown smoothed out, as her breathing evened, as she slipped deep into sleep.

  Will you be my forever grown-up? Kat’s heart seized at the earnestness behind Niffer’s question.

  Rye was waiting in the living room.

  “I am going to murder my sister,” she said, whispering so that Niffer couldn’t hear.

  For answer, Rye held out his arms. She let him fold her close to his chest. His shirt smelled of sunlight and spring air and something that was indefinably, unmistakably Rye. His arms tightened around her, carving out a refuge, making her feel safe. She felt his lips brush against the crown of her head.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. She wanted to tell him that Rachel had always been a flake, that Kat truly could not remember a time when she had been able to trust her sister to keep a promise. She wanted to tell him that she was grateful for all that he had done, for coming to the game, for treating them to ice cream. For coming inside now, and for holding her close.

  She pulled back enough that she could look up at his face, and all the need for words disappeared. Instead, he touched his lips to hers, sudden urgency overtaking his initial chaste sweetness. Kat laced her fingers between his and led him toward her bed.

  Chapter Eight

  Kat fle
xed her left ankle and walked across the dance studio floor. “I can’t believe it,” she said to her mother. “My foot feels so light!” She glared at the bright blue boot she had just removed.

  “Are you sure you should be walking on it?” Susan fussed.

  “The X-rays came back fine. Daddy’s surgeon said that he could barely see where the original fracture was.” That morning, Kat had insisted on visiting her father’s doctor. Her foot felt entirely healed; she could not remember the last time she’d felt a twinge of pain. It was time to be shed of the boot.

  Still, Susan shook her head. “I worry about you, Kat.”

  “Mama, I’m fine.”

  “You push yourself too hard. You always have. At least you’ve taken a bit of time off while you’ve been here. It seems like you and that Harmon boy are getting along quite well.”

  Kat laughed at her mother’s not-so-subtle hint, even as she felt her cheeks flush crimson. “No, Mama,” she said, meeting Susan’s eyes in the mirror. “I don’t have anything to tell you about Rye and me.”

  “I wasn’t asking!”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s just that I like seeing you happy. I understand that you actually had an ice-cream cone, when he took you and Niffer out after the game?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Teresa Rodriguez saw the three of you sitting at a table.”

  “Does every single detail of everybody’s life get broadcast in this town?” Kat tried to sound annoyed, but she was actually quite amused. Susan looked as pleased as a well-fed cat that she had gleaned information about Kat’s not-date.

  “Not every detail, dear. Teresa couldn’t remember if you ordered chocolate or coffee crunch.”

  Kat’s mock frown twisted into a laugh. “You know me. Chocolate was always my favorite. It’s Rachel who likes coffee crunch.”

  “That’s right,” Susan agreed. “Besides, Teresa wasn’t really reporting on ice-cream flavors. She was much more interested in telling me about your boyfriend.”

  “Rye isn’t my boyfriend,” Kat said, but she spat out the words a trifle too quickly. She wouldn’t have believed herself, if she’d been on the receiving end of that denial. She tried to change the topic. “He has done a great job here, hasn’t he?”

  Susan looked around her studio, her fond smile testifying that she knew exactly what her daughter was doing. “I don’t remember the last time the place looked so fine. We should be able to earn back all the lost income by autumn.”

  Kat’s heart stuttered over a few beats. “Lost income?” she asked, as if she’d never heard the words before.

  “Those checks from the fall session that Rachel never deposited? The money from spring and all those classes she let fall by the wayside?”

  Susan sounded perfectly complacent as she enumerated her other daughter’s shortcomings. Kat had rehearsed those words, over and over in her own mind. She’d tried to figure out how to say them simply, without affect, without any hint of the outrage that churned inside her whenever she thought of Rachel’s failings. All that time Kat had rehearsed, but Susan had already known the lines. “Mama! When did you find out?”

  Susan shrugged. “I’ve known all along. I kept hoping Rachel would pull herself together, that she’d get the money deposited for autumn term. Every day, I meant to ask her about the checks, to tell her that she wasn’t being fair, failing to get the money to the bank. I never got around to it, though, with everything getting so crazy after your father got sick.”

  “She had an obligation to you, Mama! To the studio!”

  Susan’s smile reflected a lifetime of quiet hope, decades of constantly readjusting her expectations. “I knew what was going on. Fairness to me wasn’t an issue. I never should have counted on Rachel to pull together an entire set of classes for spring. She’s never had any interest in dance.”

  “She didn’t have to be interested in dance! She had to be interested in you! In you and Daddy! She had to be interested in our family and do whatever she could to help out.”

  Susan shook her head sadly. “We both know that’s not Rachel’s strong suit, is it?”

  “I don’t think Rachel has a strong suit,” Kat countered. Even as she said the spiteful words, though, she held up a hand. She didn’t want to fight with her mother, to force a conversation about difficult things. “Forget I said that,” she apologized. “But I still can’t believe she just did nothing. That she let the studio fall apart like that.”

  “It wasn’t all her fault, dear. I looked the other way. I knew the classes weren’t going forward, and I let that happen. Sure, there were some disappointed little dancers…I know that. But I spoke to as many of the parents as I could, explained what was going on. Most of them already knew, of course. They were stopping by to bring meals, keeping me company at the hospital.”

  “But it didn’t have to come to this! You should have called me back in December, when you first realized that things weren’t on track for the spring term. I could have straightened things out before they ever got this bad!”

  “And missed Nutcracker?”

  The question cut like a knife. Of course Kat wouldn’t have wanted to miss The Nutcracker Suite. She had been featured as the Sugar Plum Fairy. But now that she realized Susan had known what was happening, that Susan had been fully aware of how her lifetime’s investment in the studio was fading away to nothing under Rachel’s lazy management… “Mama, I would have come here in an instant. You know that.”

  “I know, dear. And honestly, that’s why I didn’t call you. It’s not fair that you should always be dragged in to clean up the messes that your sister leaves behind.”

  Susan sounded so sad, so utterly bereft, that Kat didn’t know how to respond. She tried: “Mama, I’ve been so worried. I couldn’t figure out how to tell you that the account was going to be low. I kept picturing you writing out a check and only then finding out that you had nothing left in the bank. The more I imagined it, the worse it became!”

  “I keep a better eye on my checkbook than that, dear!”

  “I know—or, at least, I always thought you did. I just figured that with Daddy so sick, and you so distracted, you hadn’t even realized what was happening. I think I started to write you a hundred different letters, outlining everything and offering to help in any way that I could.”

  Susan shook her head. “I’m sorry this was all so stressful for you, dear. You should know by now—honesty is the best policy.”

  “Well I do know that, in general. But because Rachel was involved, I just felt like…” She trailed off, unsure of how she wanted to finish that statement.

  “You just felt like you had to protect your sister.”

  Hearing those words brought tears to Kat’s eyes. She did feel like she had to protect Rachel. Or, rather, she had felt that way. Now she was tired of covering for her twin, tired of spinning out reassurances and lies. It had taken twenty-four years, but Kat was finally ready to accept that she and Rachel were completely separate people. She wasn’t responsible for the bad decisions that Rachel made. She couldn’t change them, couldn’t make them right.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said, and it was an apology for all the things she’d said, and all the things she hadn’t.

  “Your father and I will always love both you girls. But we aren’t blind. We see what Rachel has done with her life. It’s taken us both a number of years, but we accept that we can’t do anything to change that. To change her. The most we can do is to make sure that her daughter is taken care of, that an innocent child has the comfort and stability to grow into the person she is meant to be.”

  Kat thought of Niffer’s matter-of-fact statement on the way to get ice cream, the child’s certainty that she wasn’t loved. “Niffer’s a good girl, but she doesn’t underst
and what’s going on here. She’s afraid she’s going to be abandoned.”

  A shadow ghosted over Susan’s face. “Your father and I worried about that when we asked you to come down here. We knew that Niffer would think we were pushing her away. But we hoped that she would find new strength with you, that she would realize there was yet another person who loves her, who wants to see her succeed. And in our wildest dreams, we never imagined that your father would recover so quickly, once the house settled down a little.”

  “I think I was too tough on Niffer when I first got here. I made her follow too many rules.”

  “Nonsense,” Susan said. “The proof is in the pudding. That child is better than she’s been in months.”

  Kat nodded. She’d seen Niffer’s improvement. She’d seen the difference that her presence had made. And that was why Kat had reached a decision.

  When she’d arrived in Eden Falls, Kat had planned on staying seven days, maybe ten. Those days, though, had stretched into weeks. And somewhere along the way, Kat had told herself a secret—she had decided to stay for even longer. She was going to stay in Eden Falls forever.

  What had she told her mother, way back when she first came to town? She would leave the National Ballet Company the instant that dancing stopped being fun.

  Sure, she had planned on dancing in New York for the rest of her life. She knew the company, understood the way it worked, knew its system in her very bones. She had set her goals, developed her strategies, lived by her very detailed rules. But somewhere along the way, it had stopped being fun. It had taken its toll on her sleep, on her physical health, on her mental stability.