“Thank you,” I said quietly. “For seeing what she needed when I couldn’t.”
“You would have figured it out eventually.” She finally looked at me, and her smile was soft.
“You’re a good father, Hector. You just needed permission to stop being so afraid.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
Then I heard them.
Voices outside. Loud. Insistent. The aggressive staccato of camera shutters, rapid-fire like automatic weapons.
“Mr. Valdez! Is that your daughter?”
“How does it feel to have her back in ballet after the accident?”
My blood iced over. Every muscle in my body locked up.
Through the studio windows, I could see them gathering. Reporters with cameras and microphones.
More voices joined the chorus. The crowd was building fast, multiplying like bacteria.
“Mr. Valdez, can we get a statement?”
“Is this her first class since her mother’s death?”
The flashes started. Bright bursts of light through the windows, disorienting and aggressive. The noise level rising with each passing second.
Inside the studio, Lily had stopped moving. Her face had drained of all color, gone completely pale except for two spots of red high on her cheeks. She was staring at the windows where the lights kept flashing, and I watched recognition dawn in her eyes. She was remembering something. Something bad.
“Lily,” the instructor said gently, trying to redirect her attention.
But Lily wasn’t listening. She was somewhere else now—somewhere I couldn’t reach. Somewhere two years in the past where lights had flashed and people had crowded around and her mother had been dead.
Her hands came up to cover her ears. Her eyes squeezed shut. And then she dropped to the floor, curling into herself like she could make herself small enough to disappear entirely.
I was moving before I’d fully processed what was happening. Through the door, across the studio floor, everything else blurring into irrelevance.
“Lily.” I knelt beside her, gathered her into my arms. She was shaking—her whole body trembling like she was freezing. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, baby.”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t open her eyes. Just kept her hands pressed over her ears like she was trying to block out sounds I couldn’t hear.
Outside, the reporters had realized something was wrong. The shouting got louder, more frantic.
“Is she okay?”
“What happened?”
“Mr. Valdez! Mr. Valdez!”
Sarah appeared at my shoulder, steady and focused. “There’s a back exit. Through the storage room.”
I stood with Lily in my arms. She was eight years old but felt impossibly small right now, impossibly fragile. The instructor was already moving, pushing open a door at the back of the studio that led to a narrow hallway—our only way out.
“This way,” she said quietly, urgently. “It comes out on the side street.”
Sarah ran ahead, checking to make sure the way was clear. I followed with Lily held tight against my chest.
We made it to my car without being spotted. I got Lily settled in the back seat, buckled her in with hands that wanted to shake but couldn’t because she needed me steady.
