Chapter 8: What I Kept

Sutton drove to the lake and parked facing the water.

It was four in the afternoon in October and the harbor lot was empty.

Gray waves slapped the breakwater.

She turned the engine off and sat with both hands on the wheel.

"Two years ago," she said, "the night before the Aurora casting, I found a pair of shoes in my cubby."

I stayed quiet.

"Good ones. Broken in just enough. There was a note folded inside the toe."

"What did it say?"

"You know what it said."

"Humor me."

She breathed in through her nose.

"'Break a leg. M.'"

My stomach turned over slowly.

I remembered the day I wrote it.

I remembered everything.

I had been twenty, a scholarship kid with two pairs of good shoes in the world, and I had given one away.

Afterward she never spoke to me again, and I had decided she'd thrown them in the trash.

"I'd watched you for months," Sutton said. "You came in early and left late and never complained."

"I thought, finally, someone who loves it the way I do."

She laughed, a short ugly breath.

"I thought it was a gift. I put them on the next morning without even checking them."

"Sutton."

"The casting was the adagio. The big one. Philippa watching, Father in the house, every dancer in the company on the wall."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Rhythm of Our Feelings from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.