“Melissa told me something about him, before you got here. She said it was easy to explain away the little things he did to hurt her, at the beginning. By the time they got too big to ignore, and she realized she couldn’t stop them, she was too ashamed to tell anyone about them.”
Heather bit her lip, nodding in recognition. “That’s how it was. You were right about him. At first, I didn’t want to see it. After a while I just hid it from you. The truth was too scary. But you kept showing up, even when I was too ashamed to admit I wanted you there.”
“I’ll always show up for you,” Carly promised.
“I love you,” Heather said. She blinked her tears away and pulled Carly into a tight hug. Carly sniffed against her shoulder. “I didn’t miss anything else about this place, but I missed you every day.”
Chapter 19
The black leather couch outside Mr. K’s office was firm, shiny, and extremely uncomfortable to sit on. As she and Melissa sat in tense, straight-backed silence, Heather couldn’t help but wonder if the artistic director had chosen it for that very reason, as a way to ensure anyone who met with him was thrown off balance as soon as they arrived.
Posters promoting previous NYB seasons crowded the walls of the waiting room. Some dated back to performances in London and Paris in the 1950s, as if to remind people just how old, storied, and world-renowned this institution was. In a place of pride over Mr. K’s personal assistant’s desk was the poster from last season, featuring Jack in black tights and a drenched, clinging white shirt, standing thigh-deep in the fountain on the plaza ten stories below.Like a sexy modern Prince Charming, Heather had told him glowingly when the poster proofs had come in.
Now, she averted her eyes.
They’d left Carly downstairs in the baking hot plaza, looking more anxious than Heather had ever seen her. She’d chewed her nails down to jagged pink remnants, and splotchy purple circles were under her puffy, sleepless eyes.
In the waiting room, Melissa perched next to Heather on the edge of the couch, looking scarcely less nervous, and when the phone rang on the assistant’s desk, she jumped. A moment later, Barbara set down the phone, turned to them, and informed them Mr. K was ready to see them.
“Breathe,” Heather told Melissa softly as they stood, and Melissa exhaled on command. Heather turned to her and looked into her pretty round face, trying to project more confidence than she felt.
“We’re doing the right thing,” she said firmly, meeting Melissa’s wide eyes and seeing her own doubt reflected in them. “We are going to go in there and tell him the truth, and that’s it.”
“What if he fires us, too? This company is all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I know,” Heather said. “But if this works, we’ll all get what we want. You’ll be free of Jack, Carly will get her job back, and we’ll have made it safer here for everyone. Okay?”
“Okay,” Melissa’s voice wavered, but she managed a small, toothless smile.
As they walked in, Heather slipped her hand in her pocket and hitSENDon the text she’d prewritten.
Mr. K waited for them behind his large glass desk and gestured toward two low-backed chairs as they walked in. Behind him, the floor-to-ceiling windows looked down onto Lincoln Center plaza and the theater, an impressive backdrop that only served to remind Heather of the power he held over the institution—and over them all. Mr. K was dressed to lead company class later in the morning, in a pair of expensive-looking black sweats and a matching black zip-up jacket. Under his polished bald head, his gray eyes were shrewd and observant.
“I must admit I was surprised to see this meeting on my agenda,” he said with a perfunctory smile as they took their seats. “I did notimagine the two of you were friendly with each other, for obvious reasons.”
Heather returned his smile, hoping hers looked more genuine than his. There was no reason to let him make the situation hostile before it needed to be. Then she reached across and squeezed Melissa’s hand. “We’ve discovered we have more in common than we realized.”
“I see,” he said coolly, but offered nothing else. He turned to Melissa, who still looked pale, and whose slender hands were clasped in her lap in what was either a ladylike habit or an effort to stop them trembling. “Well then, Miss Hall, what brings you two in today?”
Melissa seemed frozen, so after a moment, Heather spoke. “We’re both concerned that you’ve let Carly go. And we both think you need to hear the rest of the story before your decision is final.” Next to her, Melissa shot her a grateful glance.
“It’s already final.” Mr. K’s voice chilled from cool to cold. Heather took a deep breath, trying not to let the frost faze her. She’d heard it plenty of times in rehearsal and class, after all.
“I’m not sure what Jack has told you about Carly,” she said slowly, and though she saw him start to interject, she kept speaking, doing her best to keep her voice clear and steady. “Or what he said he’d do if she wasn’t fired.”
The poster over Barbara’s desk had made it clear enough, though: subscribers and donors adored Jack, and they had no idea who Carly was. If Jack had asked Mr. K to choose between the company’s biggest star and some nameless woman in the corps, the decision would’ve been easy.
“But the night before you fired Carly, Jack went to her apartment, intoxicated, and verbally abused her. Then he caused significant property damage.” She pulled her phone from her bag, brought up a photo of Carly’s intercom, and slid it across the smooth, cold glass. “Carly’s property manager says it will cost almost five thousand dollars to replace.”
Mr. K craned his long neck to look down at the screen, his face impassive.
“Anyone could have done that,” he said dismissively. “There’s no way to know Mr. Andersen was responsible.”
“Yes, there is,” came a voice behind Heather. She turned around to see Carly standing in the doorway, Mr. K’s assistant hovering anxiously behind her. Heather suppressed a smile. Carly Montgomery always knew how to make an entrance.
“What is she doing here?” Mr. K snapped at Barbara, looking straight past Carly.
“She’s here to confirm that it was Jack who broke her intercom,” Carly said, striding into the room and standing behind Heather’s chair, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. “And if you won’t take her word for it, she’d be happy to show you the CCTV footage. Or the police report she filed.”
