“I went to that ballet school from the time I was five. It was my whole life. At eleven, I was cast as Clara. Started rehearsals, learned all the choreography. I was so ready.” The memory is sharp even now. “Two weeks before opening night, I got mono.”
“Holly—”
“Out for two months. Missed the entire run. By the time the next year came around, I'd grown four inches. Too tall for Clara. A new group of younger girls were ready for their chance.” I look up at the oak tree, the wishes fluttering in the breeze. “I kept dancing for a few more years, but it was never the same.”
“That's why this matters so much. Marie's debut.”
“It's not just her. It's me too. My chance, the one I lost.” I turn to face him. “That's why I had to save this show. Why I was so desperate on Friday.”
He's looking at me with such tenderness that I have to look away.
“So we both gave it up,” he says. “Just different reasons.”
“Yeah. We did.”
* * *
EVAN
We're standing under the oak tree now, and I'm trying to process what Holly just told me.
Almost Clara. Cast, rehearsed, ready—and then gone. Not because someone told her to stop, but because her body betrayed her at exactly the wrong moment.
At least I had a choice, even if it was the wrong one. She didn't get that.
“This is the Wish Tree,” Holly says, gesturing up at the branches. Paper wishes flutter in the light breeze, hundreds of them, catching the light from the strands wrapped around the trunk. “It's a town tradition. Everyone writes a wish for the new year and hangs it up.”
“How old is this tree?”
“Over a hundred years. My great-grandmother hung wishes here when she was little.” She's looking up at the branches, and the lights catch her face. “Pretty much everyone in Pinewood Falls has made a wish on this tree at some point.”
“Do they come true?”
“Sometimes.” She smiles. “Or maybe people just remember what they wished for and work toward it. Hard to say.”
There's a small table nearby with paper and pens, protected under a canopy. A sign reads: “Make a wish for the New Year.”
“I don't believe in wishes,” I say.
“Humor me.”
She picks up a slip of paper and a pen, thinks for a moment, then starts writing. Her handwriting is quick, decisive. She folds the paper, reaches up to hang it on a lower branch.
“Your turn,” she says.
“I'm good.”
“Evan. You just performed in The Nutcracker. You can write a wish.”
“Those two things are not related.”
“They absolutely are. Both require suspending disbelief.” She holds out a pen. “Come on.”
I take it. Look at the blank paper.
What would I even wish for?
“I'm going to get us some drinks,” Holly says. “There's a booth that does peppermint mochas. Be right back.”
