Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
It felt like eternity before all the kids had gone home. Their doting parents arriving to collect them, the lone boy, Albie, running back because he’d forgotten his glasses, the girls all babbling eagerly about what they did, how amazing it was, how they wanted to come back next week.
Willow waved them away saying of course they could come back, because it was easier than saying they couldn’t.
As soon as they’d all gone, her mom walked back up the path with her saying, “That was tremendous, well done! You were a natural.”
Willow smiled politely. “Thanks.” She knew what was coming.
“That’s certainly something you could think of doing, if well … you know?” Martha gestured to Willow’s leg.
Willow tried to keep her voice even. “I don’t want to teach ballet, Mom. I’m a dancer.”
“I know, honey, but if your body…”
“My body’s fine!” she snapped, knowing that her mom already thought she was being touchy.
But it was too much, she didn’t want to hear those kinds of alternatives.
She was great at her job, and she loved it.
People came specifically to see her dance.
She didn’t want to teach kids to dance to Taylor Swift.
“Okay, it was just a suggestion.” Her mom held up a hand in a gesture of peace and headed toward The Silver Pantry. “Don’t forget, we’ve got dinner at The Firestone tonight for Logan and Bella.”
She had forgotten about the dinner—she needed to talk to her dad before then.
Willow watched her mom disappear inside the shop, then walked around the house to the yard.
She realized she’d hardly noticed the pain in her knee, as if the distraction of everything that was happening had taken her focus from it, but as she strode in search of her dad she felt the ache start to return.
With every step closer to the barn, she had to psych herself up ready to face him.
Her dad was saddling his horse, Bandit. When he heard her approach, he barely looked up from what he was doing.
Willow’s blood rushed in her ears. She stopped in front of him, shoulders back, trying to keep a lid on her nerves. “We need to talk.”
He kept doing what he was doing. “No, we don’t.”
Her hands clenched into fists of frustration.
She wanted to ask him to look at her. She crossed her arms, almost hugging herself, watching him as he tightened the saddle.
“We do,” she said, trying to hold her nerve.
He’d lost weight since the heart attack, and when he was angry it made him appear more so. “You can’t talk to me like that, Dad.”
“Don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do,” he said, voice tightly restrained as he moved around to Bandit’s other side. “There’s one place in this world that I don’t want to find my daughter, and there you were. I would hope you had a little more respect for our family than that.”
“Of course I do?—”
“It sure didn’t look like it.” He finally stopped what he was doing and stared hard at her.
She felt as old as one of those little girls.
There was so much she wanted to say, to defend herself, to talk rationally about it with him.
But instead, under the stern steadiness of his gaze, she found herself replying like a pleading, defensive nine-year-old.
“I was only there to check on Thunder!” It sounded like a lie the moment it came out of her mouth.
Emmett didn’t look away, just kept up that stare, silent and narrow-eyed, waiting for her to crumble. She tried everything she could to hold her ground but felt the telltale reddening of her cheeks under his scrutiny.
She had a flashback to the moments after Bob Hawkins had left the ranch.
His words still infecting the air all around them, lodged there unforgettably.
Pieces of shattered windshield littering the drive, sparkling in the sun like diamonds.
Her dad mopping his bleeding mouth with his shirtsleeve, smoothing back his hair, then looking at her through puffy bruised eyes and saying, “Did you tell Logan?”
Out of utter fear, Willow had shaken her head and said, “No.”
But her face had always been far too expressive to tell a lie, her emotions living right there on the surface. It was why she made such a good dancer. She wasn’t the most technical, but she could make an audience well up before the end of the first scene.
Her dad was looking at her in the same way right then. A shameful mix of disbelief and disappointment.
She wanted to curl in on herself but tried to hold her nerve, stand tall with her chin raised defiantly.
Emmett hoisted himself up on his horse and said, “Leave Thunder to Noah, Willow.” Then with a click of his tongue, he rode away.