Chapter 9: Ask Me

I folded the note along its old crease and held it in my fist.

"I gave you my good pair," I said. "The ones I'd saved four months to buy."

"Margo."

"I left them in your cubby at six in the evening because I thought you were the best dancer in that building."

I kept my voice low.

"I wanted you to wear something of mine on the biggest day of your life."

Her mouth trembled.

"Two years," I said. "You walked past me in halls like I was a draft. Every class and every performance, I was the weather you had to endure."

"I thought you..."

"You never asked me."

She stopped.

The waves hit the breakwater behind her, one, two, three.

"You went to the person you thought did it, and you never once asked her whether she had."

"I couldn't," Sutton whispered. "If you'd lied..."

"Then ask me now."

She stared at me.

I had never seen her afraid, not in the studio, not on a stage, not on a floor with her ankle in pieces.

She was afraid now.

"Did you cut my shoe?" she said.

"No."

"Margo."

"No. I didn't. I never would. I could never."

She put the heel of her hand against her mouth and made a sound I felt in my teeth.

Then she folded over the steering wheel, and her shoulders began to shake.

I didn't touch her at first.

I sat there beside a woman who had spent two years hating me for something I hadn't done, and I let her cry.

When she looked up her eyes were red and she looked about nineteen.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Yes," I said. "You should be."

"What do I do?"

"For now? Drive me home."

The house was empty.

My mother's text said she'd taken Wallace out for dinner to calm him down, and that there was soup.

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