Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (39 page)

But then—from that place of such sorrow and loss—Thea felt someone take her hand. Sue. She held it firmly, solidly—less to give comfort than to give strength. And when Thea glanced up at the woman beside her whom she was only just beginning to understand was a friend, she saw that Sue had been crying too. For Thea's sake.

They stood for a long time in the airport, long after Thea's parents had disappeared, not speaking. Outside the windows, the sky grew subtly pink. The frenzy of the departure hall faded. And at last, Sue put her arm around Thea and spoke.

“Come on,” she said. “Let's go home.”

 

 

Thea dropped two bags of groceries on the kitchen table; the day's hours had passed like a dream she still wasn't quite sure she'd had. While Irina prattled on, making an argument for staying up later, Thea began to put away the bags and boxes of food she'd picked up at the grocery store. She pressed play on the answering machine.

Irina grew suspiciously quiet, leaving the kitchen quickly, and the answering machine beeped again.

Thea stopped putting away a box of pasta.

She pushed stop. She looked at the sleek black answering machine.
Eight new messages
, it read. She pulled out a chair at the table, brown paper bags standing before her like parapets, and sat down. She knew she should be angry, should call Irina out. But how much more could a person tackle in one day? She stared absently at the groceries she'd yet to put away, watching condensation slip down the side of a Popsicle box. She felt too empty to cry.

When she heard Irina come into the room, she didn't turn her head.

“It's eight thirty. Aren't you going to make me go to sleep?” Irina asked.

Thea glanced at her—the daughter who was as worried about the future as Thea was, but who had no way to express it. “No.”

Irina's eyes narrowed. She had already gotten herself into her princess pajamas and brushed her hair so it hung straight and brown before her shoulders. The look on her face said she thought she was being led into a trap. “Really?”

“It's fine. Watch your TV show.”

To Thea's surprise, the furrow between Irina's eyebrows spoke less of elation than dismay. “You're not going to yell at me?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“No, I'm not going to yell at you.”

Irina stood looking at her for a moment, uncertain, then gave a yawn that would have earned her the starring role in her school play. “I guess I am kinda tired. I can tuck myself in tonight. You don't have to. Okay?”

Thea closed her eyes. The tears that had been mysteriously absent a moment ago now gathered in full force. Her ten-year-old daughter—how could kids sense the things they did? When she opened her eyes, Irina was standing in the doorway with a mix of hope and confusion on her face that touched Thea's heart. “Come here.”

In a moment Irina was in her arms, clinging tight with her head turned to the side. Thea kissed her hair. It smelled of strawberry shampoo and that indescribably sweet scent that Thea had come to love when she'd first caught it on her daughter's infant skin. Irina had been through so much—and with each day her acting out grew bigger and more dangerous. If Sue was the moral compass that guided her family, Irina was the measure of the family's emotional health. And she was wilting as any seedling in the pressure of drought and sun.

Thea rocked her gently, the resolve to protect her daughter as deep and enduring as on the day Irina was born. The feeling was more than duty—it was need. The promise to give safe passage through childhood. To guard against unhappiness while the opportunity was there.

Thea stood from the chair, carrying Irina with her gently, and walked her upstairs to her bedroom. She turned on the night-light and shut the blinds. She helped Irina into the covers, brushed back the hair from her forehead, and kissed her there.

It had been a hard year, filled with sweeping changes, the foundation of their family life shifted not by degrees but by miles. Thea had believed her and Jonathan's civility toward each other would be enough to reassure their daughter that life would not substantially change. The plan might have worked too, if Thea hadn't gone and selfishly altered the balance—believing in a weak and naive moment that she could have Garret without complications, that she could have everything.

Irina turned over onto her stomach, and Thea tucked the covers in around her. What had she been thinking? Last night, Garret had held her and promised her that they were doing the right thing, that their family would want them to be happy. But now, what fragile accord the family had found was gone. Jonathan was angry at Thea, angry at Garret. Sue was frustrated with all of them. And Irina—whether she knew it or not—was picking up on all the negativity and feeding it back to them in the form of torn-up textbooks and prank calls.

In the doorway of Irina's room, Thea paused, pain opening her up and deepening like a dark pit. This morning, she'd felt as if she'd finally—
finally
—had Garret back, but now, for the sake of her daughter, it looked like she would need to give him up again. The thought of life without him, of how close they'd almost come . . .

She shook herself out of her self-pity. The future was clear, without alternatives. It shone before her—forgiveness, redemption, acceptance—bought at the price of love.

That night, she wrote to Jonathan in an e-mail:

She started to write her name in closing, but when she looked over the letter one last time, she realized she hadn't said all she needed to say.

The cursor blinked before her, asking her to write more. One sentence could not undo everything that had happened. No number of sentences could. So she erased it quickly, then without time for second-guessing, hit
Send
.

The alleyway of the Dancing Goat was dark and cold, but Garret hardly felt the chill. The days were growing shorter, the brittle skeletons of leaves chattering along the brick walkways and skittering into corners. Above, the stars were obscured between the high walls of the buildings, but the clouds were white gray and moonlit, passing quickly as if they were sliding down the sky.

At last, Thea and an older woman emerged from the coffee shop, and when the woman looked up and saw Garret there, she gasped and jumped back. He recognized her a moment later: she was Lettie, who'd been at the Dancing Goat since he was just a boy. She used to give him a hard time for wearing his pants too baggy when he was a teen. He was glad to see her, glad she was still around.

“It's okay,” he said, holding out his hands. “It's okay. I didn't mean to startle you. I'm here to talk to Thea.”

“Garret.” Lettie put a hand to her chest while Thea locked the door. “You nearly gave an old woman a heart attack!”

“Sorry.”

Thea looked at him a long moment; he didn't like the distance in her eyes. “You waited for me out here?”

He shrugged. Standing in the cold had seemed like the best idea; he didn't want to end up milling around awkwardly in the coffee shop, waiting for Thea to close up, making pointless small talk while bigger issues loomed. “I just got here a second ago,” he said.

Thea tipped her chin down; she obviously didn't believe him. But she said, “It's okay, Lettie. You can go.”

Lettie gave her a quick look—even Garret could see it meant
Are you sure?
But the older woman took Thea's cue, cinched up her heavy coat, and started down the alley. “Good to see you,” she said as she walked past him. “I hope we run into each other again. Though perhaps without the heart failure.”

Garret laughed politely, and then, a moment later, he and Thea stood in the narrow alleyway alone. She wore faded jeans, a heavy black peacoat, and sturdy sneakers. She pulled a knit wool hat over her ears—it was thick and embellished with red and white Norwegian stars, and she tucked her hair inside.

“So what are you doing here?” she asked.

“I needed to see you.” She stood a few feet away—too far. He wished she would come toward him, put her arms around him. But she only stood still. “Walk with me?” he asked.

“Okay.”

Together, they made their way slowly out of the alleyway and onto the main thoroughfare of Price's Pier. Most of the stores had already closed for the evening, and the pier was nearly empty, lit only by streetlights and the glow of seasonal window displays. The scrimshaw shop, where old Charlie Rourke etched schooners onto recycled piano keys, had been decorated with oversized pumpkins, stalks of brown and white corn, and bales of hay. Soft shadows nestled beneath empty benches and clung beneath eaves.