Chapter 28
My wrists and ankles hurt from being zip tied, and my jaw aches from being punched. But those aren’t what bothers me.
Papa brings me breakfast in bed, perches on the edge of my mattress while I spoon scrambled eggs into my mouth. His gaze lands on the photo of Maman.
"Hélène loved it here," he says suddenly, the words careful but certain. "In a way that you don't."
I look up sharply. "I love it here, Papa."
"Don't lie to me, cherie. You love me, but you're meant for bigger things than this small town." His good hand rests flat on the mattress.
"If it was good enough for Maman, it's good enough for me."
"Your mother wanted this life. She didn't settle for it, she chose it. There's a big difference. You don't have to choose it too just because she died. She would want you to be happy, Daphne. She would want that more than anything else, and this place is too small for you."
The words shatter everything I thought I knew. My mother who died ravaged by cancer, telling me not to hurt those I loved.
"I thought she came here for you."
Papa chuckles. "No, cherie. I wanted to live in Miami, but your mother insisted on coming here.
Said she liked being able to hear the flowers grow.
" He leans forward conspiratorially. "If you ask me, what she liked best was shocking all the townsfolk with her terrible language. Hell, that woman knew how to curse."
"But she told me not to let my desires hurt the people I love. I thought she meant I should stay here and make myself small."
He grasps my hand in his, squeezing tight. "No. She never made herself small. Don't let this place, or me, or anyone, make you small."
The smallness was Pristine. The wrap skirts. The careful voice. The life that made itself small to fit. Not my mother. Never my mother.
My throat closes around words I can't speak. Nicolas doesn't push. He kisses the top of my head, gently.
I sit for a few moments taking in what he said, giving my tired and aching body a few more seconds of rest. Then I get out of bed, go to my dresser, and pull out the costume leotard that got me kicked out of the conservatory from the bottom drawer where it's lived for seven years like a shameful secret.
Deep navy, the color of deep water, unchanged after all this time. It fits like it did at nineteen.
I put the approved wrap skirt over it. Pale yellow, knee-length, exactly what a small-town dance teacher wears to a community performance. The camouflage before the reveal.
Papa watches as I cross the living room. "You can't go to the recital. You're half-dead. You need to rest."
"The children need me. I need this."
I wait for him to object, but he just sighs slowly, then climbs to his feet. "I'll drive."
Two of the Delgado soldiers at the corner climb into their car and follow Papa's truck, leaving the other pair behind to watch over the cottage.
The Pristine town square spreads before me, three blocks of grass with the bandshell at the north end.
A hundred folding chairs filled with familiar faces who have no idea their ballet teacher was taken from her own front yard yesterday — the Delgados kept Monday out of the papers entirely — no idea she has been claimed by Miami's most dangerous enforcer.
The spring fair banner flutters in the afternoon breeze, cheerful and oblivious.
Miss Macie waits at the bandshell with eight small dancers in pink tutus, their faces bright with performance excitement.
I don't cover the bruise on my jaw. Let them look.
They do — a ripple of shock down the rows, hands rising to mouths, the words break-in and poor thing passing from fan to fan.
Let them think the robbers came back. The truth would stop their hearts.
I climb the steps carrying my portable speaker, smile at the children, begin the script I've performed a dozen times.
"Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our spring recital."
The audience settles into comfortable expectation. Papa finds a spot in the third row, hands flat on his knees. Jarrod in the fifth with his mother, wearing his Sunday clothes. The mothers of my students in front. The town gossips in the middle rows, fans working against the midday heat.
The children perform their three-minute piece. Simple combinations, small bows, polite applause. They exit to the side where their mothers wait with water bottles and praise, their part complete.
I set my speaker at the corner of the bandshell. Connect my phone with fingers that don't shake, that know exactly what they're about to do.
Step to center stage.
My hands find the tie at my wrap skirt's side, and I think of Gunner's hands untying similar knots, claiming what's his with fingers that knew exactly how to make me fall apart.
I untie it.
The yellow fabric falls to the bandshell floor in a soft pile. I step out of it like stepping out of a seven-year lie.
The conservatory leotard reveals everything. The body I've been hiding for seven years, the dancer I was at nineteen before shame convinced me to be smaller.
I watch the shock travel through the audience like blood in water.
Front rows first, mothers' mouths falling open in scandalized surprise.
Middle rows next, gossips recalibrating their judgment in real time, fans freezing mid-wave.
Back rows last, the pastor's wife half-standing then sitting back down as if the movement might make this unhappen.
Papa keeps his hands flat on his knees, exactly as they were at my conservatory performance seven years ago. His face holds no surprise, only the quiet pride of a father watching his daughter shed her camouflage.
Jarrod's face shifts through emotions like a man cycling through stages of grief in fast-forward. Confusion, recognition, embarrassment, then the careful withdrawal of a man receiving public rejection from a woman he never really knew.
I tap my phone. The music starts. Not the approved children's song. My conservatory solo, the piece that got me dismissed for being "inappropriately sensual." Stravinsky-adjacent, modern with bone in it, the kind of music that makes good Christians uncomfortable.
I dance.
My muscles burn with the sweet ache of full extension for the first time in seven years. Chest open, arms long, legs reaching. Every muscle remembers what it was built for, remembers moving like this for Gunner while he watched with hungry eyes that promised to devour me whole.
I dance the story I couldn't tell with words. The basement, the recognition, the choice to want despite the cost. Each movement claims space that Pristine never offered, each extension a rejection of the smallness I've been performing.
At minute three, Jarrod stands. He walks out without looking back, stomping across the grass. His mother follows, her hand on his arm like she's steadying him or herself. Three others leave with them, the hardware store family who'd been saving his grandmother's ring.
The rest stay frozen. Some watch with hands pressed to their mouths like they're holding in screams or prayers. Some look to Nicolas for cues on how to respond.
Papa doesn't move. His face holds the same quiet pride it held seven years ago, watching his daughter become herself despite the cost. He sees what the others can't. This isn't destruction. It's construction. Putting myself back together in front of everyone.
The dance ends. I hold the final position in the bandshell's center, sweat making my leotard cling to every curve I've been hiding.
No applause comes. The audience doesn't know what they've witnessed. A breakdown, a breakthrough, a confession, a declaration of war.
I don't bow. Bowing would ask for their approval, and I'm done asking.
I pick up my speaker and walk off the stage, past Miss Macie's unreadable face, across the grass to the truck.
Papa is waiting beside it. He presses the keys into my palm and squeezes my hand once, hard, his good hand strong as ever.
"Go," he says. "The soldiers will take me home.
" His eyes are wet and proud at the same time.
My feet carry me steady and sure, the earth solid beneath me for the first time in years.
I drive away without looking back.
The county road stretches south out of Pristine, the route I've driven since I was sixteen.
Past the old swimming lake where I learned to hold my breath.
Past the spot where I got my acceptance letter to the conservatory, crying with joy at a future that would reject me.
Past every marker of the life I've been living while my real life waited in Miami's shadows.
I'm sweating in the leotard, the fabric clinging to my breasts, my thighs, outlining everything Pristine pretended not to see. The wrap skirt lies abandoned on the passenger seat like the costume it always was.
My body floats in that post-performance space dancers know.
Empty and full at once, endorphins making the world blur soft at the edges.
Adrenaline crashes through me in waves. I've done what I came to do.
Danced the wild thing on Pristine's bandshell.
Shown them exactly who they've been trying to contain.
Jarrod walked out. Papa stayed. The town saw exactly who I am.
Not the careful teacher but the woman who was claimed by Miami's underworld and liked it.
At mile ten, near the county line, I pull into a turnout. Kill the engine. Sit in the afternoon heat with cicadas screaming in the pines, their sound like applause from the only audience that matters.
Gunner.