Chapter Six
“P lié, sissonne fermé. That’s it—you almost had it. Try again.”
Jessa folded her arms, studying Fern’s feet as she retried the combination.
“Nearly there. They’ll need to see that you landed just on one foot, even if only for a second. Let’s go back to the pirouette and run the sequence.”
Fern executed the steps again, landing her sissonne much better this time. She turned to Jessa expectantly, but as Jessa nodded her approval, she was chewing over what was missing.
“I need you to feel it,” she concluded aloud. “Your technique is solid, the sequences are coming together, but it’s all too precise. Too clinical. We can’t give the Larson Academy any excuse not to accept you, and this is the last piece of the puzzle.”
Fern worried her lower lip between her teeth. “What part of the story is this again?”
“The moment the husband and the swan maiden realize they can’t be together. She’s given him her cloak of feathers, but retaining her human shape is killing the swan. She can’t be who she is when they’re together, so he returns her garment and sends her away, sacrificing their love to save her.”
Just the thought of that moment in the tale started a lump forming in Jessa’s throat. She’d choreographed one of her favorite music selections for Fern’s audition, an excerpt from a short orchestral piece written by an Irish composer. Jessa had danced in the workshop when the composition was being considered for staging in New York City. Although it was ultimately rejected, she’d never forgotten the haunting retelling of the swan maiden folktale, in which the swan removes her feathers to become human and marry the man she loves—the man who ultimately gives her feathered cloak back and sends her away when he realizes that trying to be who she isn’t is killing her.
“So the swan is feeling…sad?” Fern asked.
“Not just sadness—despair. Devastation. Grief. But at the same time, she knows this is the only way she can survive. Does that make sense?”
Fern notched her head to one side, suggesting it did not.
Jessa glanced up at the dance studio’s paneled ceiling, searching for an example that would resonate in the mind of a fourteen-year-old.
“You have a dog, right? Barney?”
Fern nodded.
“Imagine if he was…allergic to your ho use. He loves being in your house because you’re there, but the house itself makes him sick. So, you have to send him to live somewhere else, even though neither of you want him to go.”
“Couldn’t he live in the backyard?”
“If he’s anywhere near the house he gets sick. He has to go far, far away.”
Fern studied the floor, her lips thinning. “I would be heartbroken.”
Jessa snapped her fingers. “That’s it, right there. Hold onto that and try it again.”
She tapped her laptop and the music flooded through the studio speakers. Fern took her position, and when she began the sequence Jessa took a step back to watch.
Her technique was excellent, and although the emotion was better at the beginning, it flagged as she went on. Fern became distracted and disconnected, probably because she was too focused on executing the choreography to drop into the story.
Fern landed her sissonne and looked over expectantly. Jessa’s smile was encouraging, but doubt clouded her mood.
“Let’s leave it there for today. Nice work.”
Fifteen minutes later Fern had cooled down, changed, and left with her mom. Jessa closed the front door and returned to the studio, relishing the bare floor and echoing walls after a long day of teaching. She was alone in the building. Caleb hadn’t been back here since Friday, since they went to the attorney, since they danced in the square and—
He wasn’t here now, and that’s what mattered. He was at home, doing whatever it was he’d been doing these last couple of days. She’d barely seen him, and spoken to him even less.
Whatever door she thought they’d momentarily flung open on Saturday had slammed shut.
“Never mind,” she said aloud, the voice bouncing back at her convincingly chipper. They’d gotten carried away, just like he said. No point in sulking.
She dimmed the lights and restarted the music well ahead of where Fern’s excerpt began, determined to get this right. Jessa loved choreographing, and although she wasn’t convinced she was any good at it, she hoped the uniqueness of the piece would at least prevent comparisons to dancers who’d chosen more typical selections.
It also meant the pressure was on her to get everything exactly right. The song, the steps, the execution.
She might not be good enough to teach Fern, but she could sure as hell send her off on a killer audition piece.
Jessa closed her eyes, swayed gently to the beat, let the mournful yearning of a cello wash over her. This was the most painful, most beautiful part—when the swan maiden takes flight, leaving behind the man she loved, knowing it’s the only way to save them both from even greater agony.
She moved her hand in time with the steps in her mind, soubresaut, pas de bourée , and on the pirouette she turned, spinning on the split-sole jazz shoes she wore to teach.
The music swelled. Jessa felt the wind rushing over the swan’s feathers, the exhilaration of that familiar lift after so long in an earthbound human’s body, yet it was undercut by the sharp despair of her knowledge that each airborne mile carried her further away from him.
She moved through the choreography, embellished it, tested it, changed it, ignoring the stiffness of unused muscles. Let her movements be shaped by regret, by longing, by the unrelenting awareness that what she wanted—the man she loved—would ruin everything.
Jessa didn’t think about the height of her jumps, the quality of her extensions, or the elegance of her fingers. She moved by instinct, by imagination, tears stinging her eyes as she saw the swan’s high-above view of the ground below. The vast, immortal expanse to which she was heir, newly empty, utterly without hope.
She was the swan. A wife no longer, yet forever altered—and forever unrepairable.
“Damn you,” she whispered on a sob.
Jessa hurled herself into the music, now well past the end of Fern’s selection. She moved with fury and frustration, desolation and sorrow, and beneath it all was her yearning—the need so desperate it terrified her too much to give it a name. She twisted and spun, choppy and raw, her body no longer a vessel, no longer a bloodbath wrapped in a veneer of porcelain perfection .
She was simply herself. Nothing more, nothing less.
The volume diminished as the instruments played their final notes, and Jessa folded forward on the floor, her head against her thighs. She’d endured an agonizing, semi-kneeling version of this position when she was in the corps for Swan Lake , and spent the whole moonlight pas de deux trembling, watching sweat drip onto her tights.
Well, she didn’t have to do that anymore. She was who she’d been before, back in the place she’d always known. She was beholden to no one. She was free.
Like the swan.
A floorboard creaked behind her, and she scrambled to her feet, cheeks hot with mortification.
Caleb stood in the doorway. His blue eyes shone despite the low light. His jaw was set, his brows slightly pinched, and if he were any other man, she would’ve sworn it was desire that at once seemed to tug him forward and pin him to the spot.
“Jessa.” The word was a hoarse invocation, pleading yet authoritative. She was sure she heard a faint rustling somewhere overhead, feathers stirred by a breeze, the faint slap of birdwings in flight.
She shivered.
A bouncy Broadway tune blared through the speakers, slicing through the stillness in the studio, breaking the spell. The app on her laptop had moved to the next song on the playlist. Jessa hurried to switch it off.
Caleb shifted his weight, clearing his throat as she raised the lights.
“That was real pretty,” he told her, sounding uncommonly bashful.
“It’s for Fern—for her audition. I think it’s too mature, though. We’ll have to find something else, something from one of the fairy tales.” She shrugged, and then squinted at him from across the room. “How did you get here? And where’s your sling?”
“Took it off. My shoulder’s feeling a lot better. Thought I’d get back in my truck, see how it went, and it went great.”
“Oh. Well. That’s good news.”
“Sure is.” His jocular smile was back. “It’s time I was out of your hair. I’ll pack up tonight and leave in the morning.”
She gaped at him, struggling to process what he’d just said. “Tomorrow?”
He nodded, his grin never faltering.
“But I—but you—just, hold on.” She took a breath, reminding herself this was what they both wanted—and then plowed ahead anyway.
“Your doctor’s appointment isn’t until Thursday—”
“I don’t need it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“But the risk of re-injury—”
“I’ll be fine,” he assured her smoothly.
“What about the divorce? There’ll be papers to sign once the waiting period is finished.”
“You have my number—you’ll find me. The rodeo schedule is likely to keep me in Texas ’til then, anyway.”
The thought of him mounting another bull chilled her heart. “What if there’s a delay? What if you’ve moved on? It could be months before you’re in one place long enough for me to send you anything.”
“Don’t fret, sugar. We’ll figure it out.”
Jessa pursed her lips, feeling increasingly like a helpless bystander not only to Caleb’s self-destruction, but to the battle raging inside her.
She wanted him to leave. She wanted him to stay—which she shouldn’t. But she did. She wanted him to look after himself, to recover properly—but not in her house. Not within touching distance, not after Saturday, not when she’d found herself halfway to falling for him again, not when he’d sidestepped that moment so neatly while she’d nearly splattered on the pavement.
But the thought of him going, of never seeing him again, for real this time—but it was for the best. But what if what was best for her wasn’t best for him? He would destroy himself on the road, ride a bull at only fifty percent fitness and then God only knew what would happen. What if he couldn’t roll out of the way fast enough? What if his reflexes weren’t up to speed? What if, what if, what if.
She couldn’t let him leave, couldn’t let him hurt himself, couldn’t prioritize her own weakness over his survival. He’d stay, she’d suffer, and then it would finally, finally be over.
“I’d like you to stay.”
He opened his mouth to object, so she rushed to add, “Because I—I mean, my sister—well, we were hoping you could take a look at one of the tractors on the ranch. That’s what you used to do, right? Fix tractors?”
His eyes narrowed warily, but he nodded.
“She’s got one that’s pretty ornery. It’s been giving her all kinds of problems. The, uh, well, I’m no expert, but it doesn’t work. No one in town seems to know what to do with it, so I was hoping you might take a look.”
“What kind of tractor is it?”
“I think it’s green. Or maybe red. Or yellow?”
“You don’t know what make it is?”
Despite the years she’d spent in tights and tutus, Jessa was a ranch-raised cowgirl at heart and could probably give a ten-minute speech on the finer distinctions between a Kubota and a Deere. But she shook her head and tried to look vacant.
He wasn’t buying it. She could tell from the skeptical tilt of his head and the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
At least she tried. And she still had a few hours to think of—
“When did she want me to go out there?”
“Who?”
“Your sister. It’s her tractor, right?”
“Right. Yes. Exactly. How about Friday morning? ”
“She told you she’d be free then?”
Jessa nodded, deciding that Josie would be free whether she liked it or not.
“I suppose I can stick around ’til then. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” Jessa said quickly—too quickly. She lifted a shoulder. “I figured you’d still be here then anyway, with your appointment the afternoon before.”
“All right, then.” He shoved his hands in his pockets—and grimaced.
Instinctively Jessa moved to touch him, and he pivoted out of reach, gingerly removing his left hand from his pocket.
“You’re sure your sister won’t have time earlier in the week?”
Pain tightened his voice, and Jessa resolved anew to hold him here, at least long enough to see the doctor.
“I’ll ask her,” she offered, knowing full well Josie’s tractors were in perfect working order and that her sister wouldn’t let him so much as breathe on them before Jessa gave her the okay.
That seemed to satisfy him. “I’d appreciate it. I’ve enjoyed your hospitality, but I’ve got to get rolling.”
“I understand. And I’m grateful for the favor.”
“Guess I owe you a couple of those. Anyway, I just came out here to tell you I was on the move—which now I’m not. I’ll see you back at the house, unless you need me for anything.”
She shook her head. “I’ll catch you later.”
He nodded a farewell and left, the sound of the front door closing carrying down to the studio. She was alone again, but now she was lonely, too, his brief appearance stirring an aching sense of absence she hated to acknowledge.
Jessa wrapped her arms around herself, tilting her chin to find the fading daylight still filtering in through the arched windows near the ceiling.
She had to patch him up, see him firm on his feet, assure herself he was ready to be on his own. Then she could let him go without guilt, and without remorse. She’d say goodbye and take flight, and slowly, steadily, he’d disappear beneath her, smaller and smaller until he was little more than a memory. A dot on the landscape. A barely recalled interlude in the vast and wonderful future that spread out before her.