Love Is a Dance Read online

  Bath time was extra fun because, as their aunt, I felt that it was my duty to make things special. I’d brought some food coloring, and we turned the bath water green. They splashed and giggled. We had a green tea party.

  Soon Jacob was in his pajamas and tucked into his crib. Abby and I kissed him and sang him a song before heading to Abby’s room, where we read five stories.

  It wasn’t until after I’d kissed her good night, tidied up the bath toys, and listened at the door to make sure Jake was asleep that I turned my brain loose. In fact, my feet padded directly into Luke’s office where he had a framed photo of himself and Ty, their arms thrown around each other, sitting on a shelf. I stood in front of the picture and let the memories of Ty swallow me whole.

  My family had been in Birch Springs my entire life. Some families came and went, but we were established here and so entrenched that our great-great grandkids would probably still be here. The Dondero family, though, moved to town when Luke was eleven, Matt was nine, and I was eight.

  Ty and Luke were in the same class at school, and they hit it off almost immediately. Luke’s former best friend, Andy, had moved away over the summer and he was in the market for a new one. We’d all liked Ty from the start. He’d been adopted from China as a baby and was an only child. His mom was an accountant, and his dad was a history buff who loved dragging anyone he could get his hands on to any historical site he could find.

  When we first met Ty, he was a pudgy kid who loved to read. I think he surprised himself when Luke brought him to the ranch and he found himself good at horseback riding. All of us Donovan kids had been riding since before we could remember, and the four of us went off on trail rides whenever the weather was good.

  And that was one of the great things about Ty: he always let me and Matt tag along. Luke was less tolerant of us, but Ty had an inherent sense of fair play. He was also an only child, and I think he just sort of adopted us as his own siblings.

  I’d loved that when we were little. In fact, there were times when I preferred Ty’s thoughtful attention to Luke’s short fuse. I remember secretly wishing that Ty was my brother instead of Luke, especially after my brother teased me for being the slowest at something.

  It hadn’t taken long, though, before I was very glad that Ty wasn’t related to me, because my feelings stopped being sisterly around the time that he started high school. The summer between eighth and ninth grades, Ty and Luke spent eight weeks at an adventure camp in Montana. They came back tanner, taller, and looking more like men than boys.

  I’d spent that summer growing like a weed, though I was still every inch a little girl. I remember going down to the pond to swim with them and hating how gawky I looked in my one-piece swimsuit, especially compared with Julie Corcini, who wore a two-piece and filled it out really well.

  After that, everything was a little different. I was so aware of Ty at all times. I noticed how his big hands moved gently as he brushed down his horse after a ride. I noticed the way he asked people considerate questions that showed how he paid attention to everyone. And I especially noticed every single time he took my side against Luke’s and Matt’s teasing.

  I pressed my lips together, my attention focusing back on the room around me. I sighed and went to the kitchen to get myself something to drink. Then I settled down into a corner of the couch in the living room and let myself remember the day that I’d known I was in love with Ty Dondero.

  I had been a freshman in high school when Luke and Ty were seniors. Thankfully, I’d blossomed a bit. By that time, I was taking advanced ballet and was training to dance on pointe. It was intense physical work and it kept me well toned, but there wasn’t any hope of developing much in the way of a womanly figure.

  To my surprise, Nolan Reynolds, one of Luke’s friends, had asked me to go with him to the homecoming dance. Luke had gotten angry when he found out I’d said yes.

  “I don’t want my sister tagging along with my friends to homecoming,” he’d growled at me.

  His anger took me by surprise. I’d been so proud that a senior had asked me out that I hadn’t given any thought to what Luke might think about it. I hadn’t known what to say, and I remember just mouthing wordlessly at him.

  That’s when Ty had stepped in. “Luke, you know that Nolan and Amber just broke up. I think he asked Rosemarie because he knows her, and she won’t get the wrong idea.”

  It was true. I liked Nolan just fine and I knew I’d have fun with him at the dance. But there really wasn’t any question of any sort of romantic relationship flowing out from the date. In fact, that was part of why I’d agreed to go with him. There was only one senior boy I would even consider dating, and it was not Nolan Reynolds.

  Luke had finally, grudgingly, allowed that it might be okay for me to go along with his group. Mom and I had shopped for a new dress, and I enjoyed getting dressed up for my first high school event.

  Everything had gone well. We went to supper at the Outback Steakhouse in the next town over. I’d been all too happy to watch the group of older kids as they talked and laughed, so confident and mature. Luke mostly ignored me, but Ty, who hadn’t bothered with a date, sat across the table from me and kept me from feeling completely out of my depth.

  It was at the dance, back in the high school gym, when everything had gone wrong. We hadn’t been inside the gym for ten minutes before Nolan had gone in search of drinks for us and not returned. I stood by the wall, hugging my elbows and feeling conspicuously abandoned. And then I saw him on the dance floor, his arms wrapped around Amber, the two of them clearly having made up.

  A stone of disappointment had slid down into my stomach. I wasn’t brave enough to go and dance by myself or with a group of kids I sort of knew from my years growing up here. A long half-hour passed with me trying not to cry. I remember wishing that I’d said no to Nolan when he’d asked me to homecoming.

  And that was when Ty appeared. Of course, he’d noticed I was sitting alone. Of course, he knew I was too shy to join in the fun without an invitation. Of course, he’d seen Nolan and Amber and realized what I must be feeling.

  “Let’s dance,” he’d said, standing over me in his suit, looking to me like a knight in armor.

  I’d put my hand in his and we’d gone to the dance floor. Considering that I had years of training in all sorts of dance, I was still extremely self-conscious. Not Ty. He was a terrible dancer and he didn’t care a bit. When he caught me watching him with wide eyes, he’d just laughed and danced all the more outrageously. Before long, Luke and his date had joined us, along with some other kids. We all danced in a big group for the rest of the night.

  Later, when I reflected on the almost-disastrous evening, I couldn’t stop remembering that moment when Ty stood over me, hand outstretched, asking me to dance. That’s when I knew I was crazy about him.

  He had gone off to college out of state, and his family had moved away a couple years later. I’d last seen him when he was best man at Luke and Heather’s wedding. Gone were all signs of the Ty I’d known. This newer version of Ty wore well-fitting, trendy clothes, sported a trendy haircut, and rented the flashiest car he could find. He hadn’t asked me much about myself and, in fact, he really didn’t know enough to ask anything. Ty had spent half of his time on his cell phone, dealing with problems at his job back in St. Paul.

  I’d been crushed. Even after all those years, I’d still nursed a secret fantasy of the two of us meeting back up later in life and Ty realizing I was the girl of his dreams. But that fantasy got a harsh reality check over the weekend of the wedding, and again and again over the following years whenever Luke updated me on Ty’s life.

  How could a guy who lived in an ultra-modern apartment, who drove a top-of-the-line foreign sports car, who traveled first-class all around the world, ever be happy living in Birch Springs again? Was the old Ty still there somewhere, hidden deep beneath the cool exterior? I remembered Luke reporting that Ty had gotten engaged. I could only imagine the sort of wo
man who would fit into this new lifestyle. Surely she wouldn’t like him moving to the country and living in a town that boasted one coffee shop, one drug store, and one grocery store.

  As I sat and fiddled with my empty glass, I decided that there was really no chance that my crush would reemerge. Ty and I could work together and maybe even be friends, but my heart was safe. The new Ty would never be interested in the older, but still pretty much the same, Rosemarie.

  And honestly? Once I decided that, I let myself go back and replay my memories of that fateful homecoming, except that I added a more satisfying ending. One that involved Ty staying his wonderful old self and falling madly in love with me. It was really too bad that could never happen now. My heart still wasn’t over the old Ty Dondero, and I wasn’t sure it ever would be. If only that guy still existed.

  3

  As a girl, I’d taken dance classes at Donna’s Dainty Dancers dance studio. Donna Thompkins had turned an old hardware store on Main Street into a thriving business complete with three mirror-lined studios, a locker room, a comfortable waiting room, and more dancers than she could handle.

  Upon my return to Birch Springs, Donna had called and asked if I’d be interested in teaching classes. Unfortunately, my commitments at Triple Star prevented me from being able to teach, though I was sure I would have enjoyed it. I owed Donna a great deal and wanted to help. So, I compromised by spending every other Saturday morning at the studio, doing whatever I could to lend a hand.

  The morning after I babysat and took a meandering walk down memory lane, I drove over in my old Subaru, parked behind the cow shed, and elbowed my way through the crowd of girls in too-big leotards and sleepy parents clutching to-go coffee cups.

  “Oh, thank God you’re here,” Donna gasped, as she often did when I arrived. “It’s the beginning of the month and the computer’s running slow, so it’s taking forever for anyone to pay.”

  Donna was in her mid-forties. She was thin and muscled. I knew for a fact that she both began and ended each day at the gym. Her hair was a bleached mane which she tamed with stretchy headbands. She sported artsy, too-big glasses and wore nothing but Lycra and ugly vegan sandals.

  I liked her a lot. Donna would never become one of my dearest friends, but we shared a love of dance. She’d been my first dance teacher, and I still played her corrections in my head whenever I warmed up at the barre.

  Without needing to say anything, I slipped behind the reception desk, dropped off my purse, and took a moment to assess the computer situation. Once I felt that I had a grip on things, I turned to the first parent in line.

  “Good morning, Ann,” I said. “Do you need to pay for Lily’s tap class?”

  “Yes. And I wanted to see if it was too late to put her in beginning ballet.” The harried mother began to dig through her mammoth shoulder bag.

  I clicked open the spreadsheet of classes and explained which ones still had openings. The next parent in line paid for her daughter’s four classes and bought a studio t-shirt for herself. On and on it went. The computer was certainly running slowly. However, I knew these people well. I’d attended church with some, gone to dance class with a few, and been neighbors with most of them all my life. We chatted while the computer processed each click, and eventually the line of harried parents shrank to nothing.

  As soon as the beginner tap class began, the mob of kids disappeared into studio room 2, and the parents took their seats to watch and play on their phones. Donna came out, a sheaf of papers in hand.

  “Rosemarie, have you seen the order forms for the performance costumes? I printed them, and I think I made a mistake.”

  We searched for the stack, which turned out to be on blue paper, not green like Donna had thought, hindering our search. Once the forms had been rescued from their hiding spot underneath a box of cleaning supplies, Donna scurried off.

  The next hour proceeded in the same way. I filled my quieter moments by tidying everything I could reach. Things could get really hectic around here, and I wanted to make sure that Donna could find all the important things she’d had to set aside when the crowd grew demanding.

  Each time a class let out and a new one began, the waiting room filled with noise. I’d subbed in enough classes that I’d worked with most of the children who waved at me with gap-toothed smiles. Their parents called greetings or farewells and left with the sound of bells chiming on the door behind them. Abby was in one of the beginning classes, but Heather didn’t have more than a quick smile and a wave to spare me before they bustled on their way.

  “Rosemarie,” Donna called around ten, her phone pressed to her ear, “Can you cover the ballet 5 class at eleven? Julia has the stomach flu.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “What are they working on right now?”

  Donna returned to her phone call, pushing her red-rimmed reading glasses onto the top of her head. “Julia says they’re doing pointe prep work.”

  “Okay, no problem,” I replied and turned back to the computer and the parent waiting for his payment to go through.

  At ten minutes to eleven, I went to the locker room and dressed for my class. Teaching beginning dancers was always adorable, but the technical parts of dance were lost on them. We could count it a success if the tots learned a handful of vocabulary and could mostly follow along when they performed at the recital in December. Teaching the advanced dancers was much more satisfying. Those students were able to focus on the subtle perfecting of their movements and had put in hundreds of hours of practice.

  There were a dozen girls in this class who came from all over southwestern Wyoming. Donna’s was the only studio that offered this level of classes in the area. The students here all wore their pointe shoes, though they were beginning to spend only a few moments actually on pointe during class time. They needed to build up their foot, toe, ankle, and calf strength in order to dance on toe without injury.

  I went into the farthest studio from the reception area, where things could be a bit quieter. I wore my black leotard with the low back and elbow-length sleeves, filmy black skirt, footless dance tights, and my battered pink pointe shoes. My long chestnut hair was in a neat bun, where it would stay out of the way throughout the intense workout.

  I saw that the girls were dressed similarly. Donna didn’t require a specific dance uniform, though there were certainly requirements for what was and was not allowed.

  “Good morning, girls,” I called softly. “Julia is sick today, so I’m going to cover the class. Get your shoes on, and we’ll begin at the barre.”

  Twelve serious nods responded, and there was a flurry as toe shoes were tied into place with much excitement. All ballet dancers looked forward to dancing on pointe. I remembered those days in my own career well. It was a very difficult, demanding art.

  I turned on the CD of warm-up piano music and the girls began their usual routine. I moved among them, correcting turnout and making suggestions for improving posture. We spent a long time on strengthening exercises both at the barre and on the floor. I got out the resistance bands and showed the girls stretches they could do at home to help build up their feet.

  We ended the class doing a simple combination that included a few moments on pointe. I so enjoyed watching the girls’ focus as they wobbled and winced up on their toes. They giggled at the end, excited by their progress.

  “Great job today,” I lauded them. “Toe work is always hard. Keep practicing at home, but don’t push yourselves too hard. You don’t want to learn bad habits you’ll have to break later.”

  A hand went up in the air.

  “Yes, Kaitlyn?” I asked.

  The girl said, “My feet are in really bad shape right now. I have so many blisters from my shoes. How long until they get better?”

  From the nods around her, I knew Kaitlyn wasn’t the only one with sore feet.

  “Yeah, it’ll take some time before they toughen up a bit. And, unfortunately, whenever you get new shoes, you’ll have to go through this all
again. It’s why most dancers keep their toe shoes as long as possible before breaking in a new pair. If your feet hurt, congrats! You are on your way to becoming a real dancer. We all have really ugly feet.”

  The girls laughed. I dismissed them and went back to shower and change in the locker room. Then I bade Donna good-bye and headed to my car.

  A morning spent at the studio was always good for clearing my mind. There was something deep inside me that felt most right when I was dancing or teaching others to dance. I’d once heard a sermon where the pastor talked about the idea of shalom. He’d said that shalom was a rightness, a deep peace, where everything was in its proper place. For me, I found dancing to be my shalom.

  At least, I was at peace when I danced in a studio or with a class. I abhorred dancing in public, which was why I’d never pursued a career as a professional dancer. Much to my teachers’ dismay, I had refused to fill out applications for performance camps or dance schools. I danced because I enjoyed it, or so that others could experience the joy of becoming a dancer. I could not dance for an audience who might judge my every mistake. I’d suffered long enough to get a degree in dance from the state university, but I was all too happy to see my performance days come to an end.

  I arrived back at Bumblebee House and made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. Jill came down as I was finishing, and so I sat on one of the stools at the end of the kitchen island while she got lunch together for herself.

  “Do you have a lot of work to do today?” I asked around a bite of grilled cheese.

  “Unfortunately,” Jill sighed. “I was so tired after school this week that I didn’t get any planning done. I think I’m coming down with a cold.” And, as if to back up that thought, she sneezed dramatically.

  “Keep those germs to yourself,” I teased. “If I get sick and can’t come into work, Luke will blow a gasket.”