welcomed with everything he had in him.
“I’m fine,” he said with a rush of air, then ushered her out of the bathroom.
“You don’t look fine.”
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
Swallowed up in one of those baggy, too-long sleep tees, she flopped onto her tummy on their bed. Pushing twelve, the girl straddled that fine line between innocence and wisdom that sometimes scared Darryl half to death, especially since most days he wasn’t all that sure which side of it he was on himself. “We’re in serious trouble, aren’t we?” she said, her narrow chin propped in her hands, those wide blue eyes fixed on his. “Because of the tornado destroyin’ the shop?” When he hesitated, her pale brows crashed over her nose. “You can tell me the truth, Daddy. I’m not gonna freak on you or anything.”
Faith returned just in time to hear this last line; now they exchanged a glance that ended in Faith’s giving him a go-ahead nod. So he lowered himself to the bed and said, “Let’s just say things are gonna be kind of tight for a while.”
“Will we have to move?”
“No,” he said, even though he hadn’t thought that part of things through. They’d refinanced last year and lowered their payments, but without his income… “I promise we won’t end up camping out in somebody’s pasture.”
She looked mildly relieved. For a moment or two. “But we don’t have money for extras, right?”
Faith sat beside Heather, wearing her “Oh, dear” face as she rubbed the girl’s bony back. “Honey, this probably isn’t a real good time to bring this up…”
The girl twisted around to look up at her mother. “But it’s gonna eat me alive until I know—”
“What’s going on?” Darryl asked.
Gently sifting Heather’s slippery blond hair through her fingers, Faith said, “You know how Heather and I were taking dance classes over at Carly Stewart’s?”
Yeah, he knew. Carly’d recently moved to Haven, had started up a dance school in an old barn next to Sam Frasier’s farm. Faith had been real excited about the exercise class she’d started, hoping to work off some of the weight she’d put on from the pregnancies. And Heather had started taking ballet classes, too.
“What about it?”
Faith stroked Heather’s hair some more. “Turns out Carly thinks Heather has real potential. To be a ballet dancer, I mean. But because she’s starting so late—most little girls begin lessons when they’re five or six—she’d need private lessons to catch up. We’d only found out yesterday, so I was planning on talking it over with you last night….” Her sentence ended in a one-sided shrug.
“I see,” he said, although he didn’t really. Not that he didn’t want his kids to do whatever made them happy, but…Heather becoming a ballet dancer? Anybody becoming a ballet dancer? Besides, kids changed their minds all the time. Look at his older brother, Dave, who’d begged their father for oboe lessons, only to lose interest after six months.
“Carly already offered me a partial scholarship,” Heather said, the hopefulness in her eyes searing straight through him. “So maybe it wouldn’t cost all that much.”
Darryl pushed out a sigh, then faced the mirror over the dresser. Both females watched him, waiting for an answer he couldn’t give.
“You know how I hate sayin’ no to any of you kids,” he finally said to his daughter’s reflection, “but I honestly don’t see how we can swing it right now. Maybe next year.”
“It’ll be too late by next year!” Heather’s eyes filled. “You don’t have to get me anything for Christmas. And I’ll contribute my whole allowance. Please, Daddy? I want to do this more than anything in the world!”
Out of deference to his ribs, Darryl carefully turned, his heart squeezing in his chest at the earnestness in her expression. “How can you be so sure of something you only just started doing?”
“I don’t know. Except…maybe I think it must be like how you feel about fixing cars. It just feels really, really right.”
He caught Faith’s gaze, saw how much the whole thing was tearing her up inside, too. And unlike him, Faith didn’t tend to indulge the kids. Saying no came a lot easier to her than it did him. Which meant this must be really serious. And real important. But that didn’t change the facts of the situation.
“I’m sorry, baby, I really am. But I honestly don’t see any way of pulling it off right now.”
Her lower lip caught between her teeth, Heather traced the quilted spread with one finger for a second. Then her head popped back up, hope making her face shine. “Maybe…maybe she’d teach me for free?”
“Oh, sweetie…” Faith wrapped herself around Heather’s shoulders, pressing her cheek to her temple. “That wouldn’t be fair to Carly, would it? She has to make a living, too. It was already generous, her offering that partial scholarship. I know this is horrible, horrible timing, but—”
“It’s okay, I understand.” Heather scrambled off the bed, not looking at either of them as she scurried through the door. Faith shot Darryl an indecipherable look, then followed, leaving him feeling several notches below snail slime.
“She okay?” he asked when Faith returned a few minutes later.
Instead of replying, she wordlessly motioned for him to get up so she could remove the peach-colored, tailored bedspread she’d bought maybe a month ago. Not that he’d thought there was anything wrong with the old one, but Faith insisted the room needed “freshening up,” or something. Darryl pushed himself to his feet, helping her fold the spread back as best he could with one hand. Anything to keep from feeling helpless. Useless.
“What else could I have said, Faith?” he said in a hushed voice, standing to one side so she could set the folded spread on the chair in the corner, like she did every night. “You know what the bank balance looks like as well as I do.”
“Yes, I do. But do you have any idea what a big deal this is for her?”
“Oh, come on…lots of little girls want to dance. Not that I don’t feel bad that I can’t let her have her fun, but it would probably run its course anyway, right?”
“We don’t know that. Maybe this is an incredible opportunity for her to work with a real professional dancer, maybe become one herself and not end up stuck in this town for the rest of her life!”
Her eyes widened slightly, as if she hadn’t expected that to come out of her mouth. Darryl got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he replied, “Or she could get a bum leg like Carly and end up back here, anyway.”
“It’s not about how she’ll end up, it’s about what she has the chance to do in between. It’s about giving her opportunities that—”
Faith stopped, then grabbed her pillows off the bed.
“That what?” Darryl said quietly, catching out of the corner of his mental eye the stirrings of an elephant he’d thought had moved on a long time ago. “That you never had?”
