and unsurprising as my own face. From them I could imagine a cheap grope, an attempt to untie my bikini top, a casual slap on the ass. This was different.
Michael turned over and lay on his stomach, resting his head on his crossed arms so he could look at me. I knew even then that my life was going to change again, even if I couldn’t predict exactly how. One thing was sure, though. The summer I’d been dreading for weeks wasn’t going to be aimless or empty if Michael Butterfield had anything to do with it.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MORNING AFTER SOPHIA KEATING’S surprise phone call there was little time for Michael and me to talk. He was late for his train into the city, where he was the executive editor for a small but prestigious publisher, and Emma was eyeing the two of us over her bowl of Frosted Flakes. We were rarely all together on weekday mornings.
“Must be nice to get to sleep late whenever you want,” she complained, then set her bowl in the sink and zippered her backpack. She’d twisted her hair up behind her head with a black butterfly clip, and she looked at least two years older, which was unsettling, especially on this particular morning.
“I still have to bring a note from home, though,” Michael teased her. His tone was light, but the restless night had left a deep gray smudge beneath each eye. He was puttering, too, pouring a second cup of coffee, returning upstairs for a different tie, idling over the morning paper.
I refilled my mug of tea from the old china pot on the counter and said, “You’re going to miss the 7:50 if you don’t hurry.”
“He’s not going.” Emma slung her backpack over one shoulder with a wry smile. “You two are going to play hooky, aren’t you?”
Michael glanced at me, but I looked away, watching an enormous bumblebee hovering in the thick blue fists of wisteria outside the kitchen window. We’d taken plenty of days off while Emma was at school, spending the morning tangled in bed and later indulging in lunch out somewhere or window-shopping downtown. It was one of our rituals, a stolen day of reconnection we tried to make time for every six months or so, and we were due.
But not today. Definitely not today.
“You’re going to be late, too, miss,” I told Emma, shooing her out the front door with a kiss. “See you this afternoon.”
Her hand lifted in a wave as she set out down the walk, and I paused at the screen door, as she ambled along the sidewalk, adjusting the volume of her iPod, her head swinging in time to the beat.
Our gorgeous girl had a brother. Biologically, at least. What else he might be to her was still up in the air, but Emma would be fascinated by the news initially and then the questions would come, rapid-fire and endless. She knew full well what year we’d been married, and she’d always been too perceptive for her own good. After all, she’d picked up on the weird vibe between Michael and me this morning, even if she hadn’t interpreted its cause correctly.
Michael touched my arm, and I turned to face him. Part of me wanted the comfort of burying my head in his shoulder, but another part of me longed to crawl into bed alone for a few days and hide.
“We’ll talk to her tonight,” he said. His dark hair was sticking up in spikes over his forehead, and in my mind’s eye I could see him standing in the kitchen, running a hand through his hair restlessly, wondering if he should join me. I knew him inside and out. That hadn’t changed, either—so it was even more surprising that he didn’t understand how imperative it was that we talk first.
“I’m not sure what there is to tell her yet,” I argued, slipping away from him and returning to the kitchen. The pale wood floor was warm; early sunlight had flooded the window over the sink.
“I’m going to talk to him today.” Michael caught my wrist before I could pick up my mug. “I arranged to call him at lunchtime. There are things I want to hear from him, too.”
I let him pull me against his chest, and I breathed in the clean scent of his shirt, and the spicier smell of his skin beneath it. With his arms around me, and his heartbeat the steady, comforting rhythm of a clock beneath my cheek, the rest of the world receded for a minute, as it always had.
“I’ll call you after I speak to him,” he murmured into my hair, and I nodded. “And then we can decide what to tell Emma, and everyone else.”
When he’d gone, gunning the old Volvo out of the driveway to make his train into Manhattan, I carried my tea onto the front porch, letting the screen door slam behind me once Walter, our aging beagle, had settled into a square of sunlight with a grunt. I had dozens of things to do, but my mind refused to focus on anything other than the fact of Drew Keating’s existence.
My fingers itched to dial Lucy’s number at her office, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was nearly impossible to get her on the phone lately, and we resorted to brief, flying e-mails more often than not, but that wasn’t the reason for my hesitation. Since junior high, Lucy had been my willing ear, my shoulder to cry on, but spilling this particular story seemed like a betrayal when even Emma didn’t yet know about her half brother.
As much as I would have welcomed Lucy’s voice on the other end of the line, what I really wanted was reassurance. Someone to reassure me that I had nothing to worry about, that I hadn’t taken Michael’s love for granted, that nothing about our life together was going to change. The problem was, there was every chance that Lucy would disagree.
DANCING BALLET PROFESSIONALLY requires an incredible amount of dedication, concentration and talent. I had all three, according to my teachers, but after ten years of training, and four summers spent at the New York City Ballet’s prestigious School of American Ballet, what I didn’t have was luck. I’d fallen during a rehearsal, thanks to an ill-timed jump into Jared Farmer’s arms, and smashed my right knee into pieces, quite literally, as I landed on the floor.
Everything I’d dreamed of, everything I’d worked for, was over in that moment, and I realized it even as I lay sprawled on the gritty studio floor. The pain was a blinding starburst, hot and relentless, like nothing I’d ever felt. My knee wouldn’t move—what had once been solid seemed to be a handful of dust now, and my lower leg a useless length of bone, my foot dangling from it like an afterthought in its scuffed pointe shoe.
Now, I barely remember the round of doctors’ appointments and consultations, the surgery and the recuperation. What I remember is the awful feeling of loss, and of being lost. I had nothing to focus on for the first time. For years, every free moment of my life had been occupied with dance. Studying my idols, training, practicing, living, eating and breathing ballet. It wasn’t a distant spot on the horizon; it was the here and now, packing lamb’s wool into my pointe shoes, washing my leotards, stretching my rebellious muscles every morning, absorbing Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev and Stravinsky until I could hear the violins humming and swelling in my sleep.
Meeting Michael was what saved me. From what, I’m not sure—depression doesn’t sound melodramatic even if self-destruction does. But as intently as I turned my eyes and my heart to him, I found that I was the focus of someone else’s fascination, and it felt good.
By the end of that day at the beach, Michael had asked about everything from my family and friends to what I dreamed about at night. He wanted to know if I’d ever cut my hair, which fell halfway down my back, and if I liked white peaches. He was fascinated by my knowledge of classical music—at least, the ballet-appropriate pieces—and he’d made me list everywhere my family had ever been on vacation. He wanted to know what my room looked like, if I slept on my stomach
