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Playing with Lily in the lobby had been a quiet, resting part of a symphony. Carrying Lily’s little warm weight was a quiet part as well, so a loud crashing part with cymbals and drums and brass instruments was coming soon.
her mother told her to be good. Don’t make trouble. Do as you’re told. Be patient.
“She could have picked any of those girls, but she picked you. Try not to push your luck. If you’re too difficult or she thinks you won’t want to do certain things, she’ll ask someone else. That’s not what you want.”
“This is your fault,” Esme hissed, but instead of protesting, Madeline furrowed her brow, worry lines creased. Madeline was nervous. Life was better without you, Madeline’s words echoed. Esme’s mouth tasted like she’d licked a lemon. If she’d gotten up and defended Lily instead of leaving her alone in the living room with bitch-face Madeline, she’d probably be at the table now, twirling spaghetti around her fork and calling them worms.
I watched swans in the park before I was the Swan Queen just to get a sense of where they live, what they think. The emotions in Swan Lake are human, but the birds are so magical we forget they’re animals.
“Well.” Amelia had sighed. “Why wouldn’t I water an orchid?”
You already had one part of your life taken away. I couldn’t let life take another . . .” Her voice had trailed off.
Going home was like crawling inside a shed cicada skin now. She couldn’t do it, but there was nowhere else to go.
It was the first time she’d ever rested her head on a boy’s shoulder, but she’d been too tired to feel awkward.
I don’t remember much from when I was four—do you?” “No.” Madeline sighed. “But we’ll always know what we were.”
I know it was you. The police couldn’t prove it, and I’ll never know for sure, but I’ll always know it was you somehow, because who else could it be?
This was the lie Lily would come home to. I missed you so much, but I lived my life anyway. I made you into a make-believe
friend so everything I did or didn’t do would be OK. I forgot you were ever a real person with real feelings, pain, dreams, because there wasn’t room for you, Lily.
The smell reminded her of Lily. It always would, only now it was such a familiar part of her ballet life, too, so separate from the one that remembered baby shampoo at the edge of the bathtub at home.
It was the kind of thing they would’ve done before their lives had split. This week must mean something, Esme decided.
She took one last look at the Palais Garnier and its golden angels before following the same road home, aware of the light falling over her back, struck by the idea that sometimes great journeys ended in the same place they began.
From far away, a lily was a perfect white trumpet of petals. But up close, its inner petals were a
clown’s tongue of splattered pinks and yellows coupled with a funeral home smell, old and static, that made Esme’s skin crawl.
She was bone tired of falling and getting back up, of imagining Liz’s life, of losing her north, her south, her
east, her west and wandering alone. When they’d carried her tonight, the pressure of hands around her ankles and knowing they’d catch her if she actually fell had been a relief. The show ending was a relief.
“They have something in common, the shell and the glass. They’ve both been pushed around by the ocean. It doesn’t make them any less beautiful or exciting to find, does it?
For the first time in days, Esme dropped into a dreamless sleep.
Disappointment bloomed on Adam’s face. She wanted to go. She’d spent a lifetime waiting for Lily, hoping for the family they used to be. This time could be different, or it might not, and Adam was here only for one more day.
thinking of her mother at her sewing machine, studying the picture, a glimmer of the mother she’d been before, sewing costumes. Sewing herself into Esme’s dream.
about today. If she pressed her hand to her chest, her heart might beat backward or a paper cut would bleed blue. The phone in Adam’s pocket was silent, but she sensed it the same way animals sensed storms.
I keep thinking about this time she packed a suitcase to go to the moon. Or the time I was sick, and she listened to my heart with a Fisher-Price stethoscope, but I have no idea who she is now or what she’s been through.”
The point is we don’t have to live with our pain, Esme. It’s a choice.
Detective Molina and Nancy left with photo albums and pictures of her family. It was a safe way to meet before seeing each other in person.
Maybe this was the answer to why she danced. It had saved her after Lily had disappeared, and now it would bring them back
together again.
In all the years her train had rolled past this watery stretch, she’d never actually been here.
Were all those years of bedtime stories and make-believe games stored up in her somewhere, or was it all just gone?
No, they hadn’t grown up that night. There was still a lot of unfinished work there, but their childhoods had
ended, suddenly and without warning.
“Would you look at that?” he mused, nodding with appreciation at the open sky before turning to Esme. “You picked the perfect place.” Andre’s eyes watered, and tears rolled down his face. “Who even knew this was here? Thank you.”
She spent the mornings taking classes, learning new choreography, and her favorite, choreographing with Adam,
Lily’s room had started something for her parents. They’d bought a new leather couch and painted the living room bright white. Andre wanted to fix the kitchen up next because they were growing so much nice food in the garden; they should have a beautiful kitchen to cook together like they’d had in New Mexico.
