“There’s no time for that,” Dara said. Her own voice so like her own mother’s in that moment she felt a chill drag up her spine. “That’s a luxury we don’t have.”
“Listen,” Charlie said, even as he let his head drop, averting his eyes. “What happened—that fight—it got out of hand, but I shouldn’t have . . .”
Marie looked up at Charlie. “It was an accident,” she said softly.
“Those things he was saying,” Charlie said, his eyes fixed on Marie’s now. “He never should have said those things.”
“I told him things,” Marie blurted. “And he . . . twisted them. I told him things he couldn’t understand.”
Dara watched them, the two of them, how they worked it out for themselves. Neither of them really taking responsibility, but instead feigning at it, fluttering past it.
Watching them, she didn’t know how she felt herself yet.
Accident, yes. Sort of. Not precisely. Not fully. And these two . . .
“We don’t need to talk about fault,” Dara said. Not wanting to look at either of them suddenly.
“I’m sorry,” Marie said, “I’m so, so sorry. I was . . . I thought he . . .”
“It was an accident,” Charlie said, more firmly now. “Those stairs—those stairs were dangerous from the start.”
Yes, Dara thought, remembering her own insistence that they stay. They were.
“We’re all sorry,” Charlie said, reaching for Dara’s hands, then Marie’s.
It happened slowly; all of them moved closer together, forming a huddle. Something old and childlike. Their heads brushing against one another like tentative animals, like feral creatures exiled and now returned.
Their faces all pressed close, like long ago, ages thirteen, fourteen, bodies entwined in a pas de trois on the studio floor, their mother watching from the corner, a dark shadow, a raven hovering.
“Can we never talk about it again?” Marie asked, barely a whisper. “Can we?”
“We can,” Charlie said, his voice rough and urgent. Then, turning to Dara, “Can’t we?”
Dara looked at them, their twinned faces.
“What,” she said, her voice a smooth assurance, “is there to talk about?”
ALL RISK
It all felt right, natural. Pretending nothing had happened. Keeping secrets. Hiding everything. They’d been doing it their whole lives.
And there was too much else to consume them. Hours went by held captive by rehearsals and one-on-one sessions, by meetings with the prop master, costume fittings, wig fittings, by long trips to the Ballenger to work with the musicians, to approve the final backdrops, the Land of Snow, twenty-five feet high and glistening hotly like those old Christmas cards with the sparkles that shook loose in the envelope.
Dara spent the better part of an hour working with the stagehands and Bailey Bloom in her Clara costume—that ghostly white nightgown—on the crowd-pleasing moment when Clara’s bed glides across the stage thanks to “bed boy” hiding beneath: her youngest male student, a ginger-haired nine-year-old who’d practiced crawling swiftly under the bed so many times he’d skinned his elbows red.
She did all these things, including unpacking the six Nutcracker dolls they’d rotate throughout the performances, each one identical, Santa-red uniforms, glossy black boots, mustaches swooping over those colossal teeth.
Everything was the same as it had been every year for all the years of her life. Nothing had changed. Nothing.
* * *
*
On her way back to the studio from the Ballenger, she stopped at the bank so she could pay Benny and Gaspar. A large sum, larger than they seemed to have expected. It turned out, Charlie told her, Derek hadn’t paid them in weeks.
“It’s okay, ma’am,” Gaspar kept saying as she counted out the cash. “Everything’s fine.”
* * *
*
Ms. Durant,” Benny said, organizing his bills, folding them neatly into his wallet, “we can still complete the work. We know what to do.”
“I know you do,” Dara said. “But we’ve got a lot going on here now and—”
“Ms. Durant,” he said, then paused, as if deciding something. “I hope you know you don’t need to worry.”
“Worry?”
“About all the questions. I mean, we don’t have anything to say.”
Dara looked at Benny, who wouldn’t quite meet her eyes.
“Are the police still asking you questions?” she asked. “Were they here today?”