pulled my phone out again and stared at the screen.
And then I punched in a number I hadn’t called in years.
It rang once. Again. Then shifted to voice mail.
I wanted to hang up. Because it was easier by far not to change. It was easier to keep doing what I’d always done. But the only place that had led were these ruins I’d made of myself, my life. This sad wreckage.
And I was tired of living my life like a salvage operation.
The voice mail beeped.
I cleared my throat. I had no idea how to do this.
Which meant I had no choice but to go ahead and do it anyway.
“Ash,” I said. I blew out a breath and told myself the only olive branch that mattered was the one I extended with my own arm. My own hand. Not a series of corporate sallies through intermediaries that meant nothing in the end. “This is your brother. I think it’s time we talked.”
Darcy
It was a brisk, blustery morning in the beginning of February, and I would normally have felt grim and deeply aggrieved as I walked toward a restaurant behind the New York Public Library to meet my mother.
But this was a different sort of New Year. I’d decided. I was a different Darcy from the one who’d seen out the last year with more of a whimper than any kind of bang.
I’d already had my initial discussions with the Knickerbocker. And I knew that I’d made the right decision when their protestations that they would miss me only made me smile. Maybe because I knew that they weren’t lies, necessarily. But that they also weren’t the truth. Not really.
The thing about the corps was that if you wanted to leave, they were happy for you to go. You needed to go. It was a hard enough life when you loved it.
Annabelle felt betrayed.
“I don’t understand this!” she cried, when I told her that I’d informed the Knickerbocker that I didn’t want to renew my contract with them this year. And worse, that I was planning to go over to the dark side, after all. “Why would you blow up your entire life? Is this what happens when you do burlesque?”
But it didn’t feel like blowing up my life. It felt like living it—at last.
Winston’s dance company required an audition no matter my résumé, and I thought I should have been far more nervous than I was. I hadn’t auditioned for a new company in a decade. Instead, I felt excited.
That was the burlesque, I thought, though I didn’t tell Annabelle. It hadn’t blown anything up. It was the key that had opened a lock at the front of a cage I hadn’t known was holding me in. Now the door was open and I could do anything.
Thinking about burlesque dancing made me think about Sebastian, which I still did far too often. And I might have known, without a shred of doubt, that I’d made the right decision. That I wouldn’t change anything if I could.
But that didn’t make me miss him any less.
My mother had come down to the city for some or other charity thing today. She knew perfectly well this was my day off, so I’d had no option but to agree to meet her for lunch when I would have preferred to work on my audition routine.
I walked into the restaurant, saw her at once, and started weaving my way to the tables toward her. She looked as she always did. Perfectly put together, her hair elegant, her expression haughtily serene.
I couldn’t help thinking about the odd ties that held us together. Mother and daughter. Obligation and disappointment, love and hope. I understood how those things moved as one and made a whole when it was a dance company. Why did I think a family was so different?
When she looked up and saw me, a faint frown marred her smooth forehead. I knew she did not approve of what I had chosen to wear for our lunch. My favorite boots, clunky and a little bit motorcycle-y. Leggings without a tunic covering them up, making them the pants she abhorred. And the cropped leather jacket that showed off entirely too much of my body without even attempting to conceal any of it. I could hear her objections from across the room.
But she said nothing as I sat down opposite her and we exchanged greetings.
I waited until we’d ordered our food, a sensible salad for her and a grilled cheese for me, because I liked to live dangerously. These days, anyway. Then I sat back in my chair and smiled at her.
“I’m glad you wanted to have lunch, Mom,” I said, before I lost my nerve. “I have something to tell you.”
Up went that brow. But I refused to be cowed.
“I’m leaving the Knickerbocker,” I said.
My mother stared back at me, her face frozen. “I beg your pardon?”
“I understand that you don’t appreciate other forms of dance the way you do ballet,” I said as diplomatically as possible. “But I’m going to join a contemporary dance company. It actually has quite a sterling reputation, though of course it doesn’t have the Knickerbocker’s grand history. Anyway, it’s time to move on and that’s what I’m doing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand this, Mom.” My voice was harder than it needed to be, maybe. But I wanted to get my point across. “I hope you’ll support me either way.”
My mother blinked. “Darcy.”
I braced myself for the lecture, but she only shook her head as if I was a mystery to her. It made my heart hurt.
“Of course we’ll support you,” she said, with that cultured certainty that had always made me feel grubby and unhinged in comparison. “You behave as if you think your father and I don’t know how difficult it is to be a professional dancer. But of course we do. We see exactly how hard you work. If you see any hesitation on my part it’s because I thought you loved ballet to distraction. Why else would you dedicate your life to it?”
“I do love ballet.” Though I felt unsteady, suddenly. As if I’d never seen my mother before. As if I’d broken my own heart. “But it doesn’t love me back, Mom. It never will. And I think there’s only so long you can live with that.”
Maybe I wasn’t talking about the ballet anymore. Not entirely.
“I know it’s the fashion to tell young people that they should do what they love, damn the torpedoes, and so on,” my mother said, after a moment. “But you’ve done that. And you’ve always combined your passions with intense discipline. It’s why you’ve made it as far as you have.”
“But not far enough,” I finished for her. Before she could get the jab in. “Not a soloist.”
“Will you be a soloist at your new company?”
“Yes.” It was amazing how much satisfaction it gave me to say that. “I believe I’ll come in—assuming I nail the addition—as a principal.”
