Variation: A Novel

NYMargot505: I’m starting to think Alessandra Rousseau might actually be dead or something. Anyone know if they’re filling her spot, yet?

“That’s . . . a lot,” Kenna remarked as we stood with our backs to the cliff an hour later, throwing tennis balls into the yard for Sadie to fetch.

“I’m a horrible person, aren’t I?” I tugged the sleeves of my sweatshirt down over my palms.

“You think there’s any chance of me dignifying that question with a response?” She shot me a heap of side-eye as Sadie raced back to us.

“I feel horrible.” I took the not-yet-slimy ball from Sadie and chucked it again, careful not to throw toward the pool. Turned out goldens really liked water, and they took forever to blow-dry.

“Because you kissed a man who’s had you tied up in knots for almost half your life? Because you’re sneaking around that girl’s mom without her knowledge in order to manipulate her? Or because you ran off from your support system while rehabilitating a serious injury, refused to pick up the damned phone, and forced me to rent a car and drive it—which I have not done since moving back to Manhattan—from the world’s smallest airport because there’s no Uber out here in the beach town of Nicholas Sparksville?” She brushed her long black twists over her shoulder as the wind picked up.

A sour taste flooded my mouth at the picture she’d painted. Nothing like getting called out.

“Yes,” I finally said. “All of it.” Sadie found the bright-yellow ball and bounded back across the grass and around the pool. “What am I supposed to do? About any of it?”

“Why would I have any idea?” She bent down and took the ball from Sadie.

“Because you’re the smartest woman I know. You graduated college at twenty and medical school at twenty-three, for crying out loud.” I’d never even gone to college. The Company had consumed my life at seventeen, the same year I’d earned my high school diploma online.

“And I’m a sports medicine doctor, not a shrink.” She threw, and the ball landed somewhere near the vicinity of the shrubs. “And what the hell were you thinking, getting a dog? You know Vasily isn’t going to let her hang out at the studio. That man hates anything related to joy. And you’re in the building for almost twelve hours a day. You are a freaking mess, Allie.”

“I know.” I watched Sadie scramble for the ball and wished it was that easy to be happy. “How is Matthias?”

A smile spread across her face. “Still the perfect boyfriend. Still spends a little too much time at the hospital, but that’s to be expected for surgical residency. And don’t go changing the subject. My life isn’t the train wreck. How’s your mother?”

Sadie raced back, jumping over a patio lounge chair. “Mean. Rachel said your mom was up to see her a couple of weeks ago.” Eloise was the only other name Mom authorized on campus. They’d danced together for over a decade. “She doing all right?”

“She says she is.” Kenna sighed. “Throws herself into all the board nonsense for the Company. I think she’s both compensating for your mom’s absence and keeping herself busy to avoid the reality of the situation that her best friend isn’t coming back to New York.”

“And yet you’re not a shrink.” Sadie dropped the ball at my feet, her tongue lolling to the side as she panted. “I’m really sorry I didn’t call you back.”

“I know you are. Doesn’t excuse it, but it’s not like I didn’t disappear on you a few times too.”

“While you were in residency. Not the same.” There were friends who could tell if you were having a bad day. Kenna and I knew if the other was in a bad year. “One last time,” I told Sadie, then threw the ball as hard as I could. “You going to ask me about the ankle?”

“Not unless you want to talk about it.” Kenna looked my way. “I’m not here as the Company’s doctor. I’m here as your friend. Paperwork says I’m on three days of personal leave. No one knows I’m here except Matthias.”

Wrapping my arms around my waist, I looked from Sadie to the vast expanse of ocean beyond the cliff. The ocean wouldn’t care if I danced or retired, if I kissed Hudson or walked away. The waves would come regardless of my relationship with Juniper, and they would keep coming long after we were only memories. In a way, my insignificance was comforting enough that I could finally speak the truth.

“I keep saying I’ll be fine, but I don’t know if I’ll make it back from this.” I whispered the confession, letting it past my lips for the first time. Giving it voice . . . giving it power. “I just know that I can’t recover in the building while every soloist watches, and either consciously or subconsciously hopes I won’t.”

“Understandable.” She glanced around the backyard. “Not sure hiding out here is going to help. I don’t care what kind of equipment you have in there, it’s no substitute for me.”

“That, I know.” I took the ball from Sadie and rubbed her head.

“Do you want my help?” Kenna offered.

A burst of hope flared in my chest, but quickly dimmed. “I can’t rehab in New York, and there’s no way Vasily would let you come out here to work with me alone. You’re too important to the Company.”

“That’s not an answer. And you’d be amazed at what Vasily would do for you. He still has your Equinox ballet on the short list for fall, and you’re not even back yet.” She crouched down to pet Sadie, covering her perfectly tailored slacks in dog hair.

“I’d be grateful if you’d check me out while you’re here.” There, I’d asked for help.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” She stood, then rose on her toes and peered out over the backyard to the beach below.

“What are you looking for?” I joined her.

“Just looking to see if there’s a middle-aged white man wandering the beach, looking for redemption and a bottle of old love letters.”

I snorted.

“Don’t you scoff at me, Alessandra. I drove through the town. You and I both know the second Thanksgiving hits around here, there’s a surplus of Christmas tree farmers just waiting to snatch some Manhattan girl’s soul and teach her the true meaning of the holidays.” She shivered in repulsion.

We turned to walk back toward the house and found Anne coming out of the back door, holding yet another sample centerpiece. She startled, then smiled. “Kenna! I didn’t know you were coming!”

Kenna brandished a smile I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. “How’s it going, enabler?”

“I’m going to change the setting, and let’s see how you do,” Kenna said two days later as I lay horizontal on the jumpboard in our gym. Up until now, I’d had it at less than my body weight.

“Sounds like absolute torture. Let’s do it.” My hands fisted at my sides and I braced my feet against the platform.

“I’d rather you struggle here than fall.” Kenna popped back up from beside the machine. “And from what I’ve seen, you’re ready.” She moved to the end of the board, then leaned over slightly, her gaze focused on my feet. “Bend the knees into plié.”

I bent, the shoulder pads of the machine sliding with me.

“Roll up on demi-pointe,” Kenna instructed.

I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet, focusing on the articulation of my foot and stabilizing my ankles. Everything below my waist filed a complaint that I didn’t bother listening to. It was my second workout of the day, and after the full sessions I’d put in yesterday, my body was loudly reminding me how out of shape I was.

“Up to relevé,” she ordered.

My right ankle threatened to tremble, but I extended, straightening my legs as the jumpboard added resistance to simulate my weight. Sweat beaded on my forehead. “I kind of hate you right now,” I squeaked out.

“Blah blah. Lower back down.”

I slowly brought my heels to the board. “Feels like it’s going to wobble.”

Footsteps sounded toward the front of the studio, their rhythm telling me it was Anne.

“You’ve got to start trusting your body at some point.” Kenna stood, folding her arms across her chest. “Do it again.”

“Are you sure she should be up on relevé?” Anne’s brow furrowed as she reached Kenna’s side.

“I’m sure I’m the only doctor in the room,” Kenna countered.

“Don’t fight.” I separated myself from the pain and pushed through another repetition.

“It’s not a fight when I automatically win. Go again.” Kenna studied my ankle as I repeated the motion. “You look steady.”

“She’s in pain,” Anne protested.

“And? Name one time dancing didn’t bring you pain.” Kenna shifted to my right side and crouched as I did another rep. “I examined her yesterday morning, and again last night after working her out. She’s nowhere near a hundred percent, but she’s ready to start climbing. It’s been almost five months since surgery, and she’s done a great job of building back her calf muscles. She’s just short on confidence.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here.” I breathed through the next rep, and my phone buzzed on the gym mat to the right side of my head.

“You keep going and I’ll check the phone.” Kenna picked up the device as I pushed up to relevé. “Ooh, if it’s not the fourth text message from one Hudson Ellis since I got here.”

“What does it say?” Anne leaned in.

“Love being a spectator in my own life,” I muttered, lowering myself slowly.

“Then stop spectating and do something.” Kenna handed me the phone.

Hudson: Can we talk?

Hudson: Please?

Hudson: Did I mention that I’m sorry?

Those had all come in the last thirty-six hours.

Hudson: To clarify, the things I’m sorry for do not include kissing you.

Ugh. It would have been easier to ignore him if I didn’t relive that kiss every time I closed my damn eyes. I sighed and sat up, straddling the machine. “Let’s have lunch.”

We ate at the kitchen island, and I left the text messages unanswered since I didn’t know what to say.

“This is really good, Anne.” Kenna forked another piece of salmon on my right. “Thank you for cooking.”

“You’re welcome. It’s nice to be useful,” Anne answered from the left, stabbing her entrée. “And you know what? I’m not an enabler.”

I groaned and bent down to adjust my leg warmers since I had a feeling Kenna would put me at the barre after lunch.

“Still thinking about that one, are you?” Kenna said.

“She was dying in New York,” Anne fired back, leaning forward to look past me.

“Was she?” Kenna asked. “Or were you?”

My fork clanged against my plate.

“She’d do nothing but work out, ice her ankle, and sleep. Eva couldn’t get her to socialize, or even go to the studio for a little human interaction. So yes, I brought her to our beach house, where there’s a full gym with the same rehab equipment the Company has, a full ballet studio, and a fresh change of scenery. If you think that’s enabling, then fine.” Anne threw out her hands. “I’m an enabler.”

“Anne,” I lectured.

“And to think, you’ve always been the stable one,” Kenna muttered.

“But you and I both know I would do anything for Allie,” Anne continued. “Including leave Manhattan and juggle everything for the gala from here. And yes, I want her to recover, I want her back on the stage if that’s where she wants to be, but it’s far more important to me that she’s happy than if she’s a principal.” She sat back.

“Do I need to be here for this discussion?” I asked.

“All valid points,” Kenna agreed. “Still enabling. You’re a great sister, Anne. You’re just not a ballet instructor.”

“That, I can’t deny.” Anne sighed and went easier on the fish. “But Allie has outgrown Madeline’s,” she joked.

But Madeline’s couldn’t be the only studio out here. Not with the afternoon-only schedule she kept.

“Who else teaches around here?” I asked. “Not for me, just wondering which studios get invites for the Classic.” It was two months away.

“There’s a few.” Anne nodded. “Gerard’s, Winnie Waters, Quinn Hawkins—”

“Quinn Hawkins opened a studio?” My eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah, about a year ago.” She waved her fork. “She’s out by Cedarville. Why? When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Not since Eva’s last year at the Classic.” She’d been eighteen, if I remembered correctly. “So, seven years ago? Pretty sure she came in second.”

Anne nodded. “I think I heard she tore her ACL or something. Whatever it was ended her career pretty quickly.”

“That’s sad,” I muttered.

“It always is,” Kenna agreed. “But it’s not you.”

We finished up lunch, and then Kenna ordered me to the barre.

Barefoot, I took what had always been my place, the third mirror panel, and prepared for pain.

She worked me with the drive of an instructor, as her mother had been, and the eye of a doctor, as Anne watched nervously, jotting down notes of exercises Kenna wanted me to focus on in the next few weeks.

“I can’t.” I shook my head after her latest command. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck, and every muscle in my body screamed.

“You can,” she corrected me. “You just don’t want to, which I think is half the problem here.” She drummed her fingers on the barre.

“That’s not true,” I retorted, snapping slightly.

“Prove it.” She gestured to my feet.

Fear held me in its grasp and squeezed.

“Come on. You’ve been here before. You know what it feels like.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “And no one in this room gives a shit if it’s not perfect. Sophie’s not here. If you don’t want this, no one’s going to blame you. You want to retire early? Escape the tyranny of the Company? I will send an email that it’s a career-ending injury. I’ll have your back. But if there’s a chance you still want your position as a principal, then let’s go. The time to rest is over, and the time to push is now. What do you want, Allie?”

Why was that everyone’s question for me lately?

I glanced over at the picture of the four of us, at Lina’s bright, infectious smile, then to Anne, who scribbled something into the notebook. If either of them had been in my position, they would’ve fought like hell to keep it.

Mom would accept nothing less than me returning as a principal dancer at her company.

I moved my feet into first position and dipped into a demi-plié, ignoring the burn above my right heel. Ribs closed. Shoulders down. Then I rose into relevé, shooting to the balls of my feet.

Pain raced up the back of my calf, dull but insistent. I shut it out with my usual method, pretending it was simply my baseline, and tightened my thighs and core. My quads and glutes reminded me it had been far too long.

But my ankle didn’t waver, wobble, or tremble. It was pissed, but it did the job I assigned.

Kenna smiled. “Do it again.”

I completed every rep she handed out, and by the time we were finished, my ankle throbbed with an insistence I couldn’t block out.

“Ice it. You look way better than you give yourself credit for,” Kenna said as I went through my postclass stretches. “And twenty weeks post-op? You can totally rock heels at the gala. That should shut Charlotte and the other wagging tongues right up.”

“In two weeks?” Anne asked.

“The gala is in two weeks?” I sat with my legs folded over each other, then leaned forward to ease my back.

“Yes.” Anne’s eyes narrowed. “And I’ve been working on it for months, so don’t even think about skipping out. You will be at that museum if I have to drag you myself.”

“See, now that is not enabling,” Kenna said with a grin.

“Don’t take her side.” I shook my head and sat up. “Of course I’m going. Vasily sent an email this morning saying he wanted to talk to Isaac and me, which means it’s about Equinox.”

“I’d say having a role created for you is worth going for.” Kenna sat on the green balance ball.

“I already RSVP’d for you and Hudson.” Anne tucked the notebook under her arm.

Hudson? My stomach fluttered, and those weren’t butterflies. They were more like wasps. “I’m not taking Hudson. Pretty sure our pretend relationship only exists within county lines.” Take Hudson to New York? Even if he wanted to go—which I doubted he did—that would be letting him into my actual life . . . where he could actually hurt me again if he wanted.

“Oh yes, you are.” Anne nodded with each word. “You told me Caroline already made an issue out of it.”

“You did.” Kenna bounced on the ball.

“There will be photographers and journalists—”

“Exactly.” Anne waved her pen at me. “Caroline will see the pictures, and we’ll be one step closer to her accepting your relationship, and by proxy, our family. Which, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t going well, and we’re kind of on a deadline since you’ll be back in New York in August.”

“So will you. And everyone will see the photos. You’re asking me to go public with a relationship that doesn’t exist.” I unfolded my legs. “A little help here?” I lifted my eyebrows at Kenna.

“I think the entire situation is a ticking time bomb.” She bounced. “But if there’s a chance I get to see the man who’s pretty much sabotaged every relationship you’ve ever had—without even knowing it—struggle to fit into your world for a night, then I’m on Anne’s side for this one. Should make for an amusing evening.”

“Thank you.” Anne smiled and straightened her shoulders, then cocked her head to the side. “Wait, did you say you think the situation—”

“A ticking time bomb that’s going to blow up in your face.” Kenna nodded. “I get that she’s Lina’s daughter, and you probably have some big, complicated feelings about her being the last living piece of her that you should definitely address with your therapists, but hear me out.” She stilled the ball beneath her. “If she was your daughter, how would you feel about the absolute shenanery going on here? And what would you do when it came to light?”

I winced. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t thought before.

“If she was mine—” Anne’s voice faltered, and my chest clenched as she cleared her throat and fought for composure. “I would like to think I’d be happy that there were more people in the world to love her. And I wouldn’t be so difficult that these morally gray actions are necessary. We just want to know our niece.”

Kenna looked my way.

“I care about what Juniper wants.” I snagged my water bottle and rose. “It doesn’t seem fair to me that she should have to wait eight more years to find out her medical history, or where she comes from. And yes, I have some very complex feelings about what I owe Lina, and whether or not that includes helping her daughter dance like she did.”

“I don’t envy the position any of you are in,” Kenna acknowledged as she stood. “I think we’re done for the day.”

“You did great, Allie. I’ll go grab some ice for your ankle.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s what older, enabling sisters are for.” Anne left the studio, and Kenna walked my way.

“You should start actually jumping on the jumpboard, work the resistance up.”

I nodded. “Thank you for coming out here.”

“Of course. You would have done the same for me.” Her gaze darted to the open door. “Two things. You’re medically cleared for pointe. I’m not going to infantilize you by telling you how slow to take it. You know your body. Do whatever you want with that information.”

I took a quick drink to help swallow the sudden lump in my throat. “And the second?”

“You don’t owe Lina anything,” she said quietly. “Not when it comes to Juniper, or your mother, your sisters, or your career.”

Except I did.

“I’m the one who got out,” I whispered.

“You living for her isn’t going to bring her back.” She gave me a sad, knowing smile, then headed out of the studio, leaving me with the cacophony of my thoughts.

I closed my eyes, then centered myself, willing the chaos to quiet so I could make the necessary decisions, starting with the easiest ones first.

First, if I was cleared for pointe, then I’d start tomorrow, period.

Second, I picked up my phone and texted Hudson.

Allie: My company’s gala is in two and a half weeks. June twenty-eighth in New York. Black tie. It’s probably a good idea for you to come with me.

Third, I opened the internet browser and started a search.

Hudson: Consider it done.

I pulled up the website, and selected the schedule tab. The second it opened, I scrolled through, then sighed in pure angry frustration.

“Damn it, Juniper.”