Last Dance
Page 26
“What’s it say?”
“It’s sealed, Sam. I haven’t opened it. It’s for you.”
The envelope is long and white. My name is written in blue ink. Sam. I sip my beer, put the glass down, and open it. A picture falls out. I raise it to the light. My mother is sitting by her window. Maggie is on her left, holding flowers, and on her right is a woman in white.
Maggie leans over and looks at the picture.
“That’s one of those selfie things,” she says. “Sara took it.”
“This is Sara?”
“Yes. Lovely girl.”
“This . . .”
My voice fades; my heart hits bone. Dylan Cross looks at me from over my mother’s shoulder. Her black hair is dyed a deep red. Her face shines with makeup. But her eyes are the same blue flames I was so close to once. It is her in thin disguise, smiling as if she had subsumed my life and was offering it back to me in a captured moment of intimacy. I can’t think. I can only see her wandering these rooms, walking the hallways of my childhood. Sara? No. Dylan. She entered this home and robbed me. She collected details and memories from Maggie and disappeared. But the face in the picture is not mocking. The eyes hold no menace. Her smile is not a crime. It is a sly invitation to a game not finished. The picture was taken in the clear light of approaching dusk. My mother’s stare is empty and lost. Maggie’s eyes are weary with the burden she has carried. It is a photograph of the cruel things to come.
“I don’t know what I’ll do without her,” says Maggie. “Sara was such a help.”
“Where is she?”
“She moved.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t say, just that she found another job. I didn’t pry.”
“What did she do when she came?”
“I told you. She helped me bathe your mother, comb her hair, rub lotion on her. She helped me clean up a little. She’d have a beer with me sometimes. She asked a lot about you.” Maggie touches my hand. “You okay, Sam?”
“Did she leave anything else behind?”
“No. Are you sure you’re all right? You seem rattled.”
“A little tired, maybe,” I say, looking into my beer and then to Maggie, composing myself. “I should have checked out Sara when you first told me about her. You said the hospital sent her.”
“As part of in-home care. It’s all covered, Sam.”
“Do you have the paperwork?”
“No. Sara kept it. You know how I am with that kind of thing. She was a saint. Nothing wrong with Sara.”
I look inside the envelope for a letter that isn’t there. I tuck the picture into my hip pocket. Maggie and I sit in silence and finish our beers. She gets up, runs a hand through my hair, and kisses me on the cheek. She leaves me and walks up the stairs to her room. Her door closes. The house falls quiet. A trace of Dylan’s spirit has not yet vanished. I can sense her. She is out there somewhere, carrying stolen pieces of me. But she has left part of herself behind. A hushed good-night in a warm house. An invisible sliver among us. What to say of such intrusion and violation? So brazen an infraction? Nothing. We will meet again. She will make it so.
I turn the kitchen light off and stand at the sink. The snow in the alley is silver and gray. I search for faces in it but can see none, just a steady, silent fall. I take out my phone and call Lily. No answer.
Acknowledgments
I thank my agent Jill Marr at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, my editor Michael Carr, and all the good people at Blackstone Publishing, including Haila Williams, Ciera Cox, and Alenka Linaschke. I am grateful to Lincoln Jones, Theresa Farrell, Amy Jones, and all the dancers at American Contemporary Ballet in Los Angeles. And, as ever, I thank Clare, Aaron, and Hannah for being who they are.