“This is Maggie at the county recorder’s office returning your call.”
“Right,” Dara said, alert now. “Are you the one that called the other day? Something about the house?”
“This is Ms. Durant of 1221 Sycamore Avenue, correct?”
“Yes,” Dara said.
“I suppose we’ve been playing phone tag. You’d called about the deed to your property? And you are correct. Your name is still on the deed, along with a Ms. Dara Durant. So if you’d like to record a transfer of ownership, all you need to do is file a quit claim deed.”
Dara held on to the edge of the desk.
“This is Dara,” she said. “I think you’re trying to reach my sister. Marie.”
“Oh, dear,” the woman said. “My apologies.”
“My sister shouldn’t be on that deed anymore. Not for five years. And why is she calling you?”
“Ms. Durant, I’m afraid I can’t answer these questions.”
“Transfer of ownership—is that what you said? Transfer to who? A family member can’t just push another off the deed.”
“Ms. Durant,” the woman said, “we can’t get involved in family disputes.”
“That’s my home. My husband and me. Her boyfriend put her up to this. It’s fraud—”
“Ms. Durant, I’m going to hang up now. But you may want to speak to your sister.” The woman paused. “Or your attorney.”
* * *
*
Dara locked herself in the back office and called Charlie, whose voice sounded faint and groggy. He’d been running Nutcracker errands all day in the Chrysler, picking up an extra box of “snow,” the slippery confetti that would dust and swirl and cover the stage every night, and all the dancer’s heads, too, at the end of Act II, the Waltz of the Snowflakes.
“And Marie started all this?” Charlie kept saying, again and again. “She called them?”
“Yes,” Dara said. She thought of the insurance form Derek had hustled past them. “Or she did, without understanding what she was doing. What does Marie know about deeds?”
She could hear Charlie’s throat clicking nervously on the other end.
“I don’t understand,” Charlie said. “Anyone can just file something and take away your own property?”
“Not anyone. She’s still on the deed. We must not have done the paperwork. Putting you on the deed, taking her off.”
“Oh,” Charlie said. “I guess I don’t remember.”
Everything had happened so fast, Marie so eager to take their money and run. The world was waiting! Everything became about getting her out of there, getting her the money for her share of the house, getting her shots, getting her passport photo taken at the drugstore, her face in that passport so vibrant, almost manic, smiling with all her teeth but a funny wander of her right eye, like, Are we done yet, are we done because I gotta go, go, go . . . or I’ll never go at all.
But the moment Marie left, Dara marveled at how empty the house felt.
Charlie, she’d said that night at dinner, raising her glass, trying to smile. At last, it’s just we two. Like we wanted, all those years ago.
We didn’t want to be left here, he reminded her. We wanted to leave.
* * *
*
Are you going to talk to her tonight?” Charlie asked when she called again. “I mean, we have to. We . . .”
“We have to,” she said. “After. Later.”
She was thinking of the long hours she would be sitting with Marie at the Ballenger Center that evening. Marie and her vulpine face and her guile and deceit.
“I should be there,” he said. “I’ll come.”
He sounded urgent, warm. She felt close to him for the first time in days and weeks. A tenderness that almost ached.
“Stay there,” Dara said. “We need you upright. We need you.”
Charlie paused. “Okay. We’ll talk when you come home.”
Dara looked at her watch. It was late. So late. But she didn’t want to hang up. She wanted him to reassure her, something.
“Oh,” Charlie said, “I dropped off the snow, so it should be there.”
The snow for the Waltz of the Snowflakes. It came by the crate and it was never enough. And after every performance, parent volunteers, if they were lucky, would sift through it all for the next performance, digging out bobby pins, a stray button, an earring back, all the hazards every dancer faced under their feet. The stage floor had to be pristine, even in a paper snowstorm. A single errant hairpin might bring down a dancer, might take everything away.