The Firefly Dance

by Sarah Addison Allen

  Mrs. Jordan, Kit to her friends, was Walter’s mother, as well as the school nurse. When Tessa was a senior, she began to make constant trips to the infirmary. These visits had little to do with illness and more to do with the serious way Kit Jordan listened. Unlike Tessa’s grandmother, Mrs. Jordan was always calm. Tessa complained of headaches and dizziness and was allowed to rest, sometimes with a cool compress on her forehead. Mrs. Jordan knew that Tessa’s parents were dead before even checking a record. The rumors about Tessa’s parents had almost mythical proportions in their village. And, as is the nature with all rumors, those about Tessa’s parents were viciously exaggerated.

  Tessa’s losses had deeply touched Mrs. Jordan, and she offered the quiet, well-mannered girl a job babysitting her own Althea on Saturday nights. Althea protested that she didn’t need a babysitter (after all, she was almost ten), but after meeting Tessa, Althea’s objections stopped. They got along like friends, and Althea looked forward to their evenings together. Walter, Althea’s older brother, was away in Chicago at law school, and Tessa began waiting for him to come home the moment she saw his photograph. She liked the way he seemed embarrassed by the camera’s attention on him, yet still determined to have the last word. He had a sort of half-crooked smile that was disarmingly flirtatious—something that would allow her to later suggest it was he who had seduced her.

  Tessa was seventeen then. She had been kissed by boys and had felt their excitement as they pushed against her, signaling their needs. But as soon as she saw the picture of Walter, she knew that everything up until then had been a rehearsal for her life with him. Walter would be hers. She thought only of him and waited. He would be everything to her. She would be everything to him. Everything. Together, they would have a perfect, normal family just like his. Her whole awful past would be vindicated by a blissful life with Walter Jordan and his flawless family.

  Tessa knew exactly what Walter was worried about. It was always the same whenever anything occurred that referenced Tessa’s insight. And even though he said very little on the subject of her mother, whatever he said, or didn’t say, was always cautionary. He wasn’t much of a talker, her Walter. Still, early in their marriage, he’d approached Lucy with his concerns. He wanted Tessa to thrust aside her preoccupation with Ursula’s disappearance and focus on her own family. Walter told Lucy that he simply could not get through to Tessa. Lucy made repeated calls to Tessa, obviously at Walter’s prompting, urging her granddaughter to remember her poor mother’s end. “And think of the baby,” Lucy pleaded. “Think of Regina.” Tessa promised although she knew that no one had the power to conceal something if it chose to reveal itself.

  And here they were, all these years later, still trying to make sense of that which could not be explained.

  Walter tried to bring the conversation back to the unidentified client.

  “I’m just attempting to understand why someone would come into the salon pretending not to know you when she does.”

  “There was just something about that woman,” Tessa said. “I can’t let go of it. She knows something.”

  “About what? Did you feel threatened by her?”

  Tessa thought about Fran’s soup and was immediately hungry for it again.

  “No, I felt surprisingly relieved.”

  “I’m sure it was nothing,” he said. “Just coincidence.”

  “Probably,” Tessa allowed. “Just coincidence.”

  Unconvinced by her tone, he persisted. “How could she know you? Did you recognize her?”

  “No. I just had the feeling that she knew me. Almost as if she’d been watching me for a long while.”

  “It’s very unlikely,” he said.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “Very unlikely.”

  They looked at each other and looked away. Tessa picked up the newspaper and turned the pages though she stared off into the distance.

  “If this is about your mother, Tess, I want you to let it go. Can you promise me you’ll let it go?”

  There it was. Walter had uttered the unmentionable.

  “I don’t make promises. You should know that by now.”

  “Make an exception.” His voice was steely. Even he heard it and flinched, but he was staunch in his request. “Just this once.”

  The first time she met Walter he was home for Thanksgiving, and he had brought his girlfriend Charmaine. Tessa immediately noticed Charmaine’s dark, exotic looks. Her hair hung like black satin across her broad shoulders and down her strong back. She was tall and muscular; in short, a woman who commanded attention.

  Tessa ignored Charmaine and focused on Walter. It was as though he already belonged to her. I want you, she thought over and over. She said his name forwards and backwards, Walter, Walter, Retlaw, Retlaw. She repeated to herself, I want you. I want you. Walter, Walter, Retlaw, Retlaw. Her mother had kept a book of spells and charms hidden, but Tessa knew all about it. Dennis forbade Ursula to poke around in that magic nonsense, but she did anyway. It was such a relief from everything else she heard inside her head.

  So when Kit Jordan told Tessa that they would not need her Saturday or Sunday, Tessa knew she had to act quickly. Soon Walter would return to Chicago. On Friday morning, Tessa brushed her fine, light brown hair and applied some mascara. She dabbed some blush on her cheeks. Her lips were good, full and surprisingly pink. And her nose was straight and strong, as was her jaw line, a complement to her long neck. She stared at her image in the mirror. She was still so colorless, so pale, next to Charmaine.

  The Jordan home was in the most expensive part of the village, facing the Hudson River and the Palisades. As she walked, hating the cold and especially the winter wind blowing off the river, Tessa went over and over what she would say to Walter. The sun was so bright that Tessa made her hand a visor, shielding her eyes from its glare.

  When Walter opened the door, he seemed momentarily confused, trying to place her.

  “Theresa isn’t it?” he said. “Thea’s nanny.”

  “Her babysitter. And it’s Tessa, not Theresa.” She hated herself for sounding so petulant. “It’s not a very common name.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not very good with names. Come in. Come in. It’s freezing out.”

  He motioned her inside. She followed him, rubbing her arms through her coat.

  “Everyone’s out at the mall. Were they expecting you?”

  “No. I wasn’t expected.” Tessa felt ridiculous. “I came to talk to you, Walter. I came to see you.”

  “Me?”

  “May I hold your hands?” she asked.

  “What for?” he said.

  “Just for a moment.”

  “Are you going to read my palms?” His smile came and went as quickly as his next breath.

  “That too,” Tessa said with such conviction that Walter could think of nothing else to say.

  He held out his hands, palms down, as most men often did, in what Tessa always saw as a final act of self-defense. Tessa took his hands and immediately turned them so his palms faced up. She rubbed each of her thumbs across the width of his smooth skin, jolted by what their touch roused. Her thumbs followed the same separate path across each upturned hand. First, she moved from his wrists slowly up towards the heel of his hand where she briefly lingered before cautiously exploring his Line of Life. She relaxed when she saw that it was both long and clear.

  She closed her eyes to give her the courage she needed to venture across his Line of Heart. Yet even closed eyes could not divert the sudden pull she felt everywhere as she traced the course of her own future. He pulled back slightly, but she held on. She studied his palm. It was as she had expected. His Line of Heart seemed to spring from Saturn, just below the fleshy part of his middle finger, evidence that Walter could be self-centered. And there was more. His palms and fingers were slightly taper
ed. He would never be very good with money. Tessa found no surprises in Walter’s hands. She had sensed all this about him the first time their hands grazed each other’s in their cursory introduction. His imperfections did not concern her.

  “Are you done?” Walter said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Have your worst fears about me been confirmed?” he teased uneasily.

  “Yes.”

  She could not yet tell him that palmistry was a ruse, a way to gain entry into the everyday world and quiet suspicions others might have about her. Palmistry merely verified what she already knew. Yet Tessa did not want to deceive Walter from the start, at least not completely.

  “Sometimes I sense things about people,” she said.

  “I think they’ll be back soon,” he said nervously. “My mother, that is, and Charmaine and Thea.”

  “I sense things about you,” she said, ignoring his warning.

  “And I sense things about you,” he said.

  Walter, Walter, Retlaw, Retlaw.

  It was as though he could hear Tessa’s voice inside his head.

  “Did you say something?” he asked.

  Tessa shook her head.

  “You’re so pale,” he said. “Do you feel well?”

  “No. I’m fine. I’m always pale.”

  She worried that he was comparing her to Charmaine.

  “Charmaine doesn’t love you,” Tessa said.

  “I intend to marry Charmaine,” he said, pulling himself up to his full height as if to defend himself against Tessa. “I’ve already told my mother. She’s offered my grandmother’s ring.”

  Tessa pretended she had not heard.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said.

  “I know,” she said so simply that it required no further response.

  He touched her face, pausing briefly, before drawing back. In that fleeting, awkward moment, Tessa wondered if he was recalling Charmaine’s exotically dark skin, her physical strength, and her self-confidence. Tessa knew she would have to rely on different attributes to win Walter.

  “You lost both your parents in a car accident, didn’t you?” he said.

  “My father died in the accident. My mother disappeared,” Tessa said. “I was told that she died some time later.”

  It was the first of many half-truths to come. She told herself it was different than lying. Looking back on that first time with Walter, Tessa wondered how different it might have been if she had told him the whole truth instead of a half-lie, half-truth—it didn’t really matter which way she said it—not then and not later.

  “Poor Tessa,” he said.

  “Yes,” Tessa said. “Poor me.”

  “Maybe I’ve been too hasty about Charmaine.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Would you like to stay and have leftovers with us?”

  “Yes,” Tessa said. “I’d like that very much.”

  And there it was. The fairytale ending to the story Tessa had already written from start to finish. She had done nothing more than to allow Walter to play hero to her defenselessness. She had made herself vulnerable, allowed him to possess her. His family would embrace her, welcome her into the fold, and they would all live together, happily ever after. The ordinary existence she longed for was within reach at last.

  Tessa and Walter had their own piano now; their own family photos as well, though none of them were of Walter’s parents or sister. It was as though they had never existed. There were photographs of Regina at every stage of her babyhood. Several of her as a sweet infant swaddled in a pink blanket; another of her at six months, yawning widely and wearing a headband with a daisy on one side. And, Tessa’s favorite, Regina smiling up at her from Grandma Lucy’s arms. Regina’s toddler years were captured in photographs of her in various Halloween costumes from the inevitable lime green lizard to the irresistibly endearing ballerina, followed by pictures of them at the beach with Regina in inflatable orange water wings. Tessa loved the photo of the three of them on a hiking excursion. Regina, strapped to Tessa’s chest, facing forward, her chubby legs dangling from the carrier. Walter, standing behind Tessa, hunched forward with his arms wrapped around the two of them, making them appear to be some sort of mythical three-headed creature. They look indescribably content.

  In later pictures, Regina, scowling and semi-toothless, her curls spilling out of a Yankee baseball cap, arms crossed defiantly, dares the camera with her flashing blue eyes. The photographs of her as an emerging adolescent, playing the role of Sarah Brown in a school production of Guys and Dolls, gave hints of the beauty that she would soon become.

  Interspersed among these were pictures of Tessa as a serious child, standing between her parents or clinging to Ursula’s side, arms wrapped around her mother’s waist. One of Tessa’s favorite pictures was her parents’ wedding photo. Ursula, incandescent in a short, white eyelet dress, gazing up into the joyful expression on Dennis’s face. They look luminous together, like every other young couple on their wedding day. It was this more than anything else that Tessa had always loved about the photograph. There was nothing in the photograph that foretold the future that would dismantle their anything but ordinary lives.

  But Tessa could never deny how their futures had unfolded, just as she could not pretend that pushing forward with Fran might catapult them all into a place where no one wanted to be. Walter’s love and commitment had been tested many times, and Tessa had to wonder how many more trials he could endure. She supposed they were about to find out.

  “I think I have made a lot of exceptions for you,” she said, giving the photographs a cursory glance. “And what if it is about my mother?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m just suggesting that there is something about this woman that can’t be ignored.”

  “What exceptions have you made?”

  “What?” Tessa said.

  “You said you’ve made exceptions for me. What exceptions have you made?’

  “I don’t know. Lots.”

  “Name one,” Walter said.

  “I haven’t turned you into a frog.”

  Walter laughed. “Well,” he said. “The only explanation for that is that you don’t know how.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” she said.

  “I’m not a betting man.”

  “Now, that’s not true either.”

  “I just want to say one thing,” Walter said. “What if this woman never comes back to the salon?”

  “That’s not possible,” Tessa said.

  “But what if?” he persisted.

  “She’ll be back. It’s only a matter of when.”

  “I wish you would let this go,” he said. “You could make yourself unavailable.”

  Tessa didn’t answer.

  “Tess?”

  She shook her head, not with spite, but with resignation. There was no choice, and there were no words to make that any more understandable.

  Walter stood, looked down at her while his hand moved over her head, smoothing her silky hair. He bent all the way over and kissed the top of her hair right where her part fell, exposing her scalp, and then left the room without looking at her or saying a word.

  Once, a long time ago, Tessa had believed that Walter could change her life. She had believed that belonging to his perfect family would obliterate everything about her own flawed history. But the Jordans had never lived up to Tessa’s expectations. On the contrary, they had betrayed her, leaving her with yet more loss to mourn. Photographs could be so deceptive, capturing a mere moment in time, not nearly substantial enough to invite assurances about the future.

  Tessa walked over to the piano and looked at her parents’ wedding picture. Impulsively, she picked it up and held i
t towards the sunlight, streaming in through the bay window. Perhaps there was something she had missed in her mother’s eyes, her father’s stance. But there was nothing. They were radiant, hopeful.

  Gently, Tessa placed the photograph back on the piano. Something else was happening now. Tessa could feel the shift, the slight difference in the way everything felt. And it had everything and nothing to do with Fran.

  (Continue reading for more information about the authors)

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  About the Authors

  Sarah Addison Allen is the New York Times bestselling author of GARDEN SPELLS, SUGAR QUEEN and THE PEACH KEEPERS (Ballantine Books)

  Augusta Trobaugh is the acclaimed author of southern novels including SOPHIE AND THE RISING SUN, (Dutton) narrated by the late Rue McClanahan for audio and optioned for film.

  Kathryn Magendie is the bestselling author of TENDER GRACES, also SECRET GRACES and SWEETIE, all for Bell Bridge Books.

  Phyllis Schieber is the author of WILLING SPIRITS, (William Morrow) THE SINNER’S GUIDE TO CONFESSION, (Berkley Books) and a summer 2011 title from Bell Bridge Books, THE MANICURIST.