Pretending to Dance (42 page)

Finally, Nora went up to the microphone, but instead of talking about Daddy, she lifted an envelope into the air. “Graham left this behind to be opened after his death.” She smiled. Her ever-present pallor had lifted; there was color in her cheeks and the faint purple-smudged skin beneath her eyes was gone.
Your mom looks like Grace Kelly, don't you think?
My eyes filled at the memory. “Graham didn't want us to spend a lot of time grieving,” Nora said, “so on the outside of this envelope, it says we should play that Kenny Loggins song ‘Footloose.'” She pulled a sheet of paper from the envelope. “And on the piece of paper inside, he says ‘pretend to dance.'”

I caught my breath. Everyone laughed. Everyone except me. I saw Janet shake her head, smiling, and heard her say to the Viking, “Typical Graham.”

I gripped the seat of my chair with both hands. He'd known what he was doing when he told me to type those words weeks ago. I'd unwittingly had a part in this horrible charade. Had he
asked
Nora to give him those pills? I felt duped, suddenly angry with both Nora and my father.

“So, my dear friends and family,” Nora said, waving the envelope in the air, “let's do him proud.”

Someone turned the stereo on again, and “Footloose” came over the loudspeakers. People obediently stood up, pushing their chairs to the sides of the pavilion as they began to dance. They looked awkward at first and I knew none of them felt like dancing. But as my father had most likely predicted, pretending made it so, and soon they were dancing with abandon, arms in the air, laughter rising into the sky above the pavilion. Maybe there were tears behind the laughter; I didn't know. I didn't stay long enough to find out. I stood up from my chair, jumped from the pavilion, and ran across the lawn, headed for home, my hands flattened over my ears. I ran past Nanny's house, across her circular drive and out to the loop road, and I kept running, running, running, putting distance between me and everyone I knew—everyone I'd loved—until I felt certain we'd be separated forever.

 

57

San Diego

“Do you still believe your father asked Nora to … help him end his life?” Aidan asks me. He's being careful with the euphemism. We'd been in the living room on the sectional when I started telling him about Morrison Ridge. Sometime during the telling, though, when I needed him to hold me, we'd moved to our bed.

“Yes,” I say. “At least I think so. I think he and Nora had probably already planned it out when he had me type ‘pretend to dance' on that sheet of paper. But it's still murder that she would be charged with if I'd ever turned her in. If I could have gotten anyone to believe me, of course.”

“Would you actually have done that?”

“Well, I didn't. I…” My eyes burn. “When I'd bring it up to anyone—Amalia or Russell or my aunt Claudia—they'd get angry with me. They felt sorry for Nora and thought I was making things harder for her. I knew if I turned her in, everyone would hate me. And also…”

“Also?”

“Deep down, I guess I still loved her.”

“Of course you did,” he says. “She raised you.”

I press my forehead against his shoulder. Tighten my arm across his waist.

“Here's what I don't get.” He rubs my neck as he speaks, and his voice is soft and a bit hesitant. “I know you believe people have a right to die. I mean, we've talked about it and we agree about it, don't we?”

“Yes,” I say, “but we don't have the right to kill someone.”

“Well, it sounds to me like your father had no alternative but to get someone else to help him.”

I sigh. “I know, but … Maybe if she'd told me the truth, I could have dealt with it better,” I say.

“From what you've told me, I don't think so,” Aidan says. “You loved your father and you had mixed feelings about Nora. And you were only fourteen. I'm not sure what she could have said or done to make things right for you.”

“I know,” I say again.

“Do you think Amalia knew the truth? Or the aide? Russell?”

“I think they wanted to believe he died of natural causes so badly that when I told them about the pencil case with the pills, they just shut me out,” I say. “I tried to talk to Dani about it once. She was a senior when I started at the boarding school and she took me under her wing. I brought it up early on; I was desperate to talk to someone about it. But she refused. She said it made me sound crazy and she wouldn't hang around me if I was going to talk that way.”

“So you were really alone with it.” He hugs me to him and my eyes fill again.

I was. I feel so sad for the fourteen-year-old girl I used to be.

“You have to go back there,” Aidan says. “You can see that, can't you?”

I shake my head. “Amalia's gone,” I say. “I feel guilty that I never got in touch with her. That I cut her out along with everyone else. But I don't see the point in going back now.” I don't want to go back, ever. What I would really like is to erase my past. I've been trying to do that for most of my life.

“You have to see Nora,” he says.

“I don't want to see her.”

“Yes,” he says. “You have to go.”

“Why are you pushing me?” I'm annoyed by his persistence.

“Because it's in the way, babe,” he says. He strokes my cheek. “You can't run away from your past any more than I can run away from mine. Yours has been chasing you for a long time and now it's finally caught up to you.”

“The timing's terrible,” I say. “Sienna—”

“She's not due for another month,” he interrupts me. Then he kisses me, and though the room has grown dark, I can see his eyes as he pulls away. “We're going to have a baby.” I hear the smile in his voice. “A
family
. And there's going to be a birth mother and you're going to be an adoptive mother. You've got to go to lay those demons to rest, Molly. You can't let your past get in the way of your future any longer.”

I sigh. He's right.

“All right,” I say, my head on his shoulder again. “I'll go.”

Still, I think, Aidan doesn't really understand what he's asking. I'm not sure I understand it myself.

 

58

Asheville, North Carolina

I try to read on the long red-eye flight between Los Angeles and Charlotte, but I can't concentrate. The night is crystal clear and I have an awe-inspiring view of the illuminated earth during the entire trip. I search in vain for landmarks in the dark. Are we over Texas now? Arkansas? Tennessee? The closer we fly to North Carolina the harder my heart pounds. I feel overcome with a crushing sense of nostalgia. I've fought that nostalgia for two decades, but suddenly I can hear the cicadas and smell the summer scent of the mountains. I feel the wind on my face as I ride the zip line.

I have so many memories of Morrison Ridge, but the one that plays over and over in my mind as we near our destination is that last talk with Daddy on our screened porch. He'd needed a hug from me that day and I'd been too angry to give it to him as I plotted my time with Chris Turner in the springhouse.
I get it, Daddy,
I think now.
I understand now
. But I am way too late. I wish I had that day to do over. I would do it so differently. I'd give him that hug he'd needed.

I remember how happy he'd looked when I told him I might want to be a pretend therapist when I grew up. There had been such joy in his eyes when he heard that—on what he most likely knew was the last day of his life—his daughter wanted to follow in his footsteps. After everything that happened, though, a pretend therapist had been the last profession I'd aspired to. I picked law because it seemed as far from pretending as I could get. Law was all about harsh reality, I thought. All about facts and truth and justice. I was wrong. Practicing law lifts pretense to an art form. I pretend every day that my clients are in the right, that I am not twisting the truth to win their cases. I've loved the challenge and I love when I can help good people triumph, but I know the truth about myself and my work: I am a pretender of the first order. And I'm a little tired of it.

*   *   *

We arrive on time in Charlotte. After that long flight, I'd like to change out of my jeans and the red shirt I've been wearing all night, but I'm anxious to get to Asheville. I brush my teeth in the restroom of the rental car agency, then pick up my car and a map and head west.

A couple of hours later, I drive into Asheville for the first time since my teens. I've heard that the city has changed dramatically in the twenty years I've been away, and I quickly see that rumor is correct. The sleepy town is alive and vibrant now and I absorb it all, driving slowly, putting off my arrival at Amalia and Russell's house for as long as I can. I have her address, but I'd visited her only once before leaving Morrison Ridge and all I recall from that visit is my anger. Amalia had never bought into my contention that Nora had killed my father. Even though Nora did nothing to stop the family from kicking Amalia out of Morrison Ridge, Amalia defended her. I didn't understand her. I still don't.

*   *   *

The little Craftsman cottage is on a tree-lined street close to downtown Asheville, and it's unfamiliar to me after so long. I stay in my car as I check the address in my phone. Yes, this is it. So different from the contemporary glass house that had once been her home. I wonder if she was happy here.

I walk up the round pavers to the front porch. The doorbell consists of bells hanging on a cord. So like Amalia, I think. I give the cord a shake, wincing at the playful sound that rings through the air. I'm not in a playful mood. Not at all.

Although I can't hear footsteps or feel their vibration beneath my feet, I have a sense that someone is walking through the house. In a moment, the door opens and Russell stands in front of me. His hair is cropped short, the black dulled by a spattering of gray, but the cocker spaniel eyes haven't lost their warmth and the years have done little to change his tight, athletic physique. He's wearing jeans and a long-sleeved blue jersey, and he still looks like he could lift my father from his wheelchair with ease.

His face registers surprise.
“Molly,”
he says.

My throat locks up so tightly I can't speak. I read so many things into his expression. Gratitude that I have come at all. Sadness that I've come way too late. And something else: I don't know if it's blame or forgiveness or simply a deep sorrow. I don't know if they're his emotions I'm seeing or my own.

He opens his arms wide and I surprise myself by stepping into them. “I'm so sorry, Russell,” I say.

“Come in.” He lets go of me, standing back to usher me inside.

I walk into a small Arts and Crafts–style living room. It seems the antithesis of Amalia's sunny, glass-walled living room at Morrison Ridge. Yet, the rich, dark wood molding and cabinetry and the numerous paintings on the walls give the room an inviting warmth. I can imagine Amalia in this room.

“Sit.” Russell motions toward a heavy blue sofa on one side of the room and I sink into the deep, fluffy cushions. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asks.

“Water?” I ask. I need something to hold on to.

He disappears from the room and returns a moment later to hand me a cold bottle of water. I watch as he sits down in an upholstered chair across the room from me. I take a sip of water, then wrap my hands around the bottle while I search for something to say. My mind goes to the weather. To Asheville's rebirth. To the charm of the house. I open my mouth, but Russell holds up his hand as though he knows I'm about to say something banal and he plans to save me from it.

“She talked about you nearly every day,” he says.

Oh God.

“I'm sorry,” I say again. “I was too angry to—”

“She didn't deserve that anger.”

I look toward the stone fireplace. I still feel it, the anger. It's bubbling up inside me at that moment. “You know Nora killed him, Russell,” I say. “Even if it was out of kindness, she did it. But you and Amalia and everyone made me feel crazy for even thinking it. How was I not supposed to be angry?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but I rush on.

“Please don't give me that line about ‘natural causes,'” I say. “I know she stole drugs from where she worked. Maybe you all wanted to believe he died of natural causes, but you were in denial. You just didn't want to believe she could do it. Or you didn't care. Or you thought that he wanted to die and the end justified the means. I don't know
what
you all thought. I only know that what happened was wrong.”

Russell lowers his gaze to the hardwood floor and neither of us speaks. After a moment, though, he raises his eyes to look at me again. “Have you been in touch with Nora at all?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Not since I left the Ridge.”

“Will you see her while you're here? Morrison Ridge is so close.”

“I flew all this way to see her,” I say. I set the water bottle on the table next to me and rub my damp palms together. “I wanted to try to get some … I don't know. Some closure or something. I'm not sure closure's possible, though. I don't even know what to say to her at this point.”

He lets out a long sigh. He lowers his hands from the arms of the chair to his knees and leans forward.

“We all killed him, Molly,” he says.

I assume he's speaking metaphorically and it annoys me. “Because everyone ultimately came out in favor of selling the land?” I ask. “I don't see—”

“No, that's not what I mean.” He stands up and walks toward the fireplace. He faces the window above the built-in cabinetry and I have the feeling he doesn't want to look at me as he speaks. “I mean,” he says, “we
all
killed him.” He turns then to meet my gaze.