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“I’m fine. Don’t worry. It just brings it all back. I worry that maybe there’s more that Iris doesn’t know.”
“God, I hope there isn’t.”
“Guys either cheat, or they don’t,” Derek says bluntly. “When they do, my experience is that they go all in.”
“Ugh. Poor Iris. She’s just the best person ever. She doesn’t deserve this.”
“No one does, but especially not her.”
“I hope she’ll be okay.”
“She will be. We’ll make sure of it.”
GAGE
I don’t knowwhy I’m still here, waiting for Iris to put her kids to bed so we can be together when I told her I don’t want what this is turning out to be—a full-on relationship that not only includes the two of us, but her children, too. I’m not so far removed from parenthood that I’m not aware that me becoming involved with her kids is a very big deal and a responsibility that can’t be taken lightly.
Despite my best intentions to remain footloose and single, I’m getting involved here. More so by the minute.
I should go.
I’m looking for my coat when my phone rings with a call from a New York number. Since it could be about work, I take the call.
“Mr. Collier?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“This is Sabre Douglas from the Elite Dance Academy in New York City. I have the names of your daughters, Ivy and Hazel, on an old list of dancers interested in performing at the Radio City Christmas show and wondered if they’re still dancing? I see they’d be eleven now, so that’s just the age we need after a couple of our dancers were forced to drop out. I tried to call Mrs. Collier, but her number isn’t in service. Mr. Collier? Are you there?”
I can’t breathe or think or do anything other than spin.
“Hello?”
“I, uh, they’re no longer dancing.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. They came so highly recommended. Thank you for letting me know. Have a nice evening.”
She’s gone before I can tell her to do the same or say any of the things expected by politeness. How is it possible that there are still people out there who don’t know? Who haven’t heard? What other lists are my daughters on that might someday result in a bomb detonating a fresh wave of grief?
A year or so before they died, Nat, who was a highly accomplished dancer as a younger woman, asked a friend in New York how to get the girls an audition for the Radio City show. It didn’t come to anything then, but apparently, they were put on some sort of list for future opportunities. I didn’t know that. Nat would have been aware of it, though.
The girls loved to dance as much as their mother and were rising stars, or so she said with none of the bias of motherhood. She said they were naturally gifted, the way she’d once been, and was determined to nurture their outsized talent. I’d been warned about the rigors of parenting preprofessional dancers and was wary but excited to see where it might take them.
“What’s wrong?”
Iris’s question draws me out of the past and back to the present in which my wife and daughters are dead. That call has opened healing wounds, and the pain takes my breath away.
“Gage.” Iris sits next to me. “What is it?”
“I got a call from a dance studio in New York asking if the girls were still interested in auditioning for the Radio City Christmas show.”
“Oh God. Gage…”
“It’s just so hard to believe someone doesn’t know, after all this time.”
She puts her arms around me and brings my head to rest on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting that.”
