“Dad,” I whispered furtively. “You told her before you did it, didn’t you?”
He shook his head, coming back to the present and looking at me. “I’ve been talkingather for months. You know how she can be. She gets all caught up in her own thoughts and doesn’t listen. I had to do something. The bank is breathing down my neck. It was a show of good faith to get me on a debt repayment plan.”
I explained about moving her inventory to the store tomorrow and beginning to sort through things. “She needs more clothes racks.”
Dad paled. “We aren’t buying anything else for the store.”
“Okay. All right.” I’d figure something out, including how to give the store some flare. “Go to bed. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
“Okay.” But Dad walked slowly down the hall, as if he was overburdened and would be unable to sleep.
Had I told Nick my family didn’t need me? How wrong I’d been.
ChapterTen
Wednesday morning,I arrived at the Sleigh Café when Nick did at four-thirty.
He did a double-take, sliding his blue stocking cap back a little. “What are you doing here so early?”
“I need time to plan my Christmas card strategy for identifying Rudolph.” I grinned at his slack-jawed reaction to that statement. “Just kidding. I want to be ready when the rush hits at five-forty-five.”
“We don’t open until six,” he reminded me, juggling the keys and a box filled with food.
“No one in town opens until six.” I took the keys from him and unlocked the door. “You want to increase business? You need to be better than your competitors. One way is to open earlier.”
He turned off the security alarm at the panel, juggling the box of food under his arm. “Is this something you learned in New York? The need to be better than other dancers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is this why you aren’t auditioning for other jobs? Because your injury holds you back?” He asked the questions very casually, almost too casually.
“Yes,” I said with equal nonchalance.
“Are you going to keep dancing? You didn’t really say.”
I shrugged, no longer feeling nonchalant as the walls closed in.
“If you stop dancing, where does that leave you moving forward?” Nick set the box of food down on the counter. “Do you want to live in New York even if you aren’t dancing? Could you be a choreographer or a dance agent? Or do you see yourself living somewhere else? Doing something else?”
“These are all valid questions.” I hugged my jacket tighter around me instead of taking it off.
“What would you do if your agent called with a job opportunity today?”
That wasn’t likely to happen. “Can we stop with the third degree?”
Nick stared at me, not agreeing. I had the distinct impression that he was waiting for me to answer.
And I might have remained silent if my situation wasn’t bottled up inside and primed for release. “I don’t have the answers, okay? I don’t know where to go or what to do. And coming here…listening to people talk about what they think I’ve done with pride in their voices…It doesn’t make me feel any better aboutretiring. It makes me feel as if I’ve face-planted. Given up.Failedbefore I’ve lived up to their hype.” Or more accurately, my mother’s hype.
“You haven’t failed. There’s a time and a season for everything.”
“And I suspect my time as a dancer is over.” The words cut me. They cut inside where I kept my dreams wrapped in gossamer wings. “I’ve never said that out loud before. And if I do quit, I need to move on...somewhere. To a place where no one has ever heard of me. Come January first, I’m gone.” But where? I had no idea.
“Somewhere? You’d leap before you look?” Nick picked up on the direction of my thoughts. “That doesn’t seem like you, Al. Even if you do want to go incognito. No. You plan. You always have.”
“It’s hard to plan for a blank page,” I said miserably.
“Then take a break and consider what might come next.”