“Did you know about this, Daddy?”
Everett flinched, like someone had jumped out of a closet and scared him. “Me?”
“Hmph!” her mother went. Translation: He had been there and said nothing.
Everett shot her a look but then turned back to Scarlett, wiping sweat from her forehead. “Does it matter now, darlin’? You need to calm—”
“Yes! It does! Would you have—would you have told him no?”
“When was this?” He looked at me, but his mind was quicker than his question. Pnina had told me that I couldn’t come around not long before Elliott had died, and I gave them no reason to believe my behavior had changed—not until I had the “sit down” with them and we made the arrangement. “Honestly, darlin’, I would have agreed with your mother. That time. She did allow him to come around when things got better.”
“For who?” Scarlett said, closing her eyes again. “She made all of my decisions. All of them! Andhelet her. That’s whyheleft me for over three years. He probably promised her that he wouldn’t interfere with my career. He probably made an arrangement with her.”
It seemed all of the thoughts she worked out in her head flowed unedited from her mouth. She referred to her mother and me in third person.
“Am I right?”
I knew she asked me, though she refused to look at me.
“No. Not entirely.”
“It all makes so much sense now,” she went on as though I hadn’t even spoken. “The only reason she let him come around was to make me happy—she knew I’d dance again if…Oh, I was so stupid. The ruse of going tohigh schoolafter I already had my diploma.He probably talked her into it so he could keep an eye on me.”
She plopped on her side, her head hitting the pillow. She curled into herself and her father pulled the covers over her.
“Oh well,” she whispered. “What does it matter now? Nothing matters now.” She fell fast asleep not long after.
I stared at Pnina until she met my eye. “Tell me again how dance is not the dark root.”
Her “talent,” as Pnina called it, was forever the source of that strife. It would come as no great surprise if all those black veins were sprouting straight from its heart.
Finding my seat outside of the room again, I hung my head.
* * *
I didn’t want her to find out that way. She had, though, and the only hope I clung to was that she would forgive me or, at the least, understand.
Looking back, if I could change the course our lives, I would. In fact, I’d throw a fist through time, punching some sense into myself. As it was, falling in love with Scarlett Fausti had dealt me a blow that I was nowhere near prepared for. After she knocked me over, she scarred me—I could recall the feel of that night better than I could remember what I ate for breakfast.
Often enough, the thoughts from that night came back to me, reminders of the hope she had inadvertently given me. Before her, I had been lost. She became my compass and my map.
Vows—I had made so many damn vows to her and myself. Plans—those had swirled and drifted in my mind like the snow that seemed to fall out of nowhere.
I remembered looking up, seeing small drifts of it, but not being positive where they had come from. The snow seemed to appear like magic. It had clung to my hair, my lashes, my lips, and each one was like a little shock, a little live wire, reminding me that the scene with her hadn’t been a dream.
You’re in a lot of fucking trouble, Fausti,I had said to myself more than once that night, and many nights after.Still.
Even so, those moments became a treasure to me. That night, our lives would be irrevocably changed by a train and a car filled with people we loved, but I had those. Those moments when I made vows, when I was surer of the plans I had made than the sound of the heart beating in my chest. That time was hidden someplace inside of me, in a safe place that could never be disturbed. I visited sometimes to see snow twirling in a midnight colored bottle.
Elliott had died not long after, in the early hours of the morning, turning the pure snow red. For the first couple of months after his death, red was all I could see. That, and the girl I had called mine ever since she danced for me.
After all the Poésy family had been through, I knew the ache that I felt for the loss of my best friend, and the loss of the plans I made in regard to his sister, were of no concern. Still, I felt responsible for Scarlett. She was caught up in the scuffle of loss and her mother’s obsession with her talent.
Scarlett’s ability to dance had forever directed our relationship. Pnina had convinced me that, for Scarlett’s life to have meaning, she had to dance. There was only a short window of time for her to become what they all had predicted she would be—some kind of ballerina legend. Her footsteps would fall on the stage at the exact angles as Maja’s.
Pnina was fond of telling Charlotte, “The world is wide open to you—seize it!” For Scarlett, hers was a narrow path filled with predestined expectations and success. “You know who you are, Scarlett! Why can’t you see it?”
I narrowed her course even further, becoming the strong arms and legs that kept her path in that direction. She looked at me now with hardened eyes—eyes that showed the glint of betrayal.
