Last Dance

by Renee Fowler

  Jack seemed satisfied by this answer, or at the very least pacified. I tell him I love him again, grab his face and kiss him hard. I hate that he doubts what I feel for him, but we both know I’ve doubted too.

  It’s one of those things I don’t allow myself to think on too much, but it swirls around us like the frigid wind ripping at our hair and clothes as we grasp onto each other on that balcony. Fate brought us together in a truly awful way. If not for two terrible tragedies, we would’ve never found each other to begin with.

  Chapter 29

  Jack

  6 Months Later

  “Jack, sit down and relax,” Evelyn says.

  Relax? I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin, but I do ease myself down into one of the hospital waiting chairs at her insistence.

  “It’s going to be fine,” she promises.

  “I know,” I say, although I know no such thing.

  Being in this place again makes me sick to my stomach. I really wish Jamie had chose another hospital to have her baby, but this is the closest, and the biggest within driving distance. They are the best equipped if something were to go wrong.

  Not that coming here did Claire much good.

  I know that’s an irrational thought. There was nothing any of the staff here could’ve done for her. She died almost instantly. Before stepping foot in this hospital again to await the birth of my niece, I would’ve said I’ve moved past. I can see pictures of Claire, and remember her fondly without grief or guilt.

  I’ll never forget her, and a part of me will always love her, but I’m in love with Anna. Deeply. Hopelessly. Completely. I wish she was here beside me now, curling her fingers over my forearm the way she does. Leaning close so her shoulder presses against mine, but she’s back there with Jamie. So is my mom. Sarah is at home with her grandfather.

  “What’s taking so long?” I ask, steepling my hands, and tapping my fingertips together lightly.

  “She’s a first time mother. It might be a while, and she’s only been back there for twenty minutes,” Evelyn points out. Her lips form a serene smile. “You’re going to be severely outnumbered by woman, Jack. You and Anna are going to have to start working on a little boy after the wedding.”

  We haven’t even been engaged a month, and this already? I clear my throat quietly. “Actually we won’t be having any. Anna can’t have children.”

  Evelyn pouts slightly. “That’s too bad.”

  I nod, feeling the bite of shame that I don’t find it too bad. The thought of losing Anna like I lost Claire terrifies me. I’m filled with that same terror right now for my twin sister.

  How can Evelyn be so calm? But I think maybe she’s thinking of Claire a bit too. Her hands twist around the strap of the purse resting on her lap. She readjusts the tissue paper poking out of the pink gift bag sitting on the empty chair beside her again and again. The crinkly rustle sets my frayed nerves on edge further.

  I know Anna felt a little funny around Claire’s parents at first. I guess it is a bit of a peculiar situation, but during the summers, growing up, I was just as likely to stumble into Claire’s house as my own when I wanted to cool off or to grab a drink. Evelyn was always almost like a second mom to me, and she adores Anna.

  When Anna rounds the corner, I jump straight up to my feet.

  “She’s here.” Her smile is huge and beautiful. “You should see how much hair she has.”

  “Is Jaime okay?”

  “She’s perfectly fine. She did amazing.” The feel of Anna’s fingers wrapped around my wrist is so grounding, and comforting. So are the words that everything went well.

  Stepping foot in that room that is different but too similar for my tastes is disconcerting. Seeing my sister holding her daughter is surreal. “You’re really a mom.”

  “No shit sherlock.”

  “It’s just… weird.”

  “It’s not weird. You’re weird.” Jamie runs a finger along the baby’s cheek. “Want to hold her?”

  I know Sarah was this small once, but I can scarcely remember it as I take the tiny newborn into my arms. The sad fact is, most of that first year of Sarah’s life was a blur of grief and misery. “Clara, you don’t look a thing like your mommy, do you?”

  “She really doesn’t,” Jamie says with a sigh.

  When Jamie first asked what I thought of that name, I was a little undecided. It’s similar, but different enough I suppose. It suits her though. “She’s almost got enough for pigtails,” I say, smelling her shock of dark hair. Clara has that unmistakable baby smell, sweet and brand new.

  “Usually all that hair falls out,” Evelyn says, scooping the baby out of my arms. “But it’ll grow back again before you know it.”

  Then we all play pass the baby, while Clara sleeps soundly.

  Watching Anna cradle my niece against her chest so carefully, I’m confronted with a pang of regret and a touch of white, blinding anger.

  Absolutely nothing happened to that bitch that ran her down. Nothing. Well, she’s pretty much been blacklisted here in the states, thanks to Mikhail, but I guess she’s dancing somewhere in Europe. Close enough to nothing in my book. The ruthless cruelty of what she did astounds me. The injustice that she got away with it, burns me. It eats at me, and somehow Anna has let it go.

  In my heart I know she’s right. Hanging onto that bitterness doesn’t undo what was done to her, but watching Anna blink back tears that I suspect aren’t all tears of joy, all I taste is bitter.

  “We could adopt,” I say, later that night while we are nestled in bed together. “After we’re married, but we could start looking into it.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted any more kids.”

  We’re laying close enough our noses almost touch, her arms and legs tangled up with mine. “I want whatever makes you happy, sweetheart.”

  “You make me happy. Everyday.”

  I try. Everyday I do my damndest to put a smile on her face, because I know better than anyone tomorrow isn’t a guarantee. And Anna’s smile lights up a whole room, and the smallest things will draw the biggest grin from her. Flowers. Little trinkets. Last week Sarah gave her a necklace she’d made at school comprised of painted macaroni noodles and clay beads. By the way Anna reacted, you’d think Sarah had presented her with the Queen’s jewels on a silk pillow.

  “I live to make you happy,” I say, kissing her lips, her chin. I drag my mouth down to that hollow space at the bottom of her neck. “Does this make you happy, Anna?”

  “Yes,” she rasps. I ask her again and again as I kiss and lick and graze my teeth down her body. I write Anna a love letter on her clit with my tongue, and she whimpers and moans, all those delicious sounds she makes, and pants again and again. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  When Clara is six months old, right after our wedding, Jamie starts hinting about moving, but we talk her out of it. Anna and I. Sarah. Jamie. My niece, Clara. All of us under one roof should be chaos, but somehow it works.

  It’s still working when Clara’s first birthday rolls around. She’s starting to look a bit more like Jamie through the eyes now, the shape of her nose a bit. Sarah is enchanted by her cousin. So is Anna. We all are, and Sarah is growing like a weed. She still looks uncannily of Claire. She is sweet and patient with her cousin, still adoring and eager to please with Anna, but she’s grown bored of ballet. I’m starting to think the only reason she stuck with it so long in the first place is she wanted to see Anna, and now she gets to see her everyday here at home.

  The day after we watch Clara smash and destroy her first birthday cake from the safety of her high chair, Anna sits me down. She’s smiling, but it’s not her usual smile. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen this particular expression on her face before now. It’s a guarded smile. A worried smile, and seeing that foreign curve across her lips has me worried.

  “Jack, I’m not sure how this happened, but I’m pregnant.”

  The air in my lungs freezes, and I can’t breath.

  “I’m ch
oosing to be cautiously optimistic, but I’m not sure if I’m even going to be able to carry this baby. I wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant in the first place. I mean, it was a one in a million type thing.”

  Anna, my beautiful wife, is staring at me expectantly, and I know I should be saying something, but I can’t form words.

  “I have an appointment to see a doctor next week. I was hoping you could go with me.”

  I manage a nod.

  “Jack, say something.”

  “I’m scared shitless right now.”

  Anna doesn’t ask why. She knows. I’ve voiced my anxieties about Jamie’s pregnancy quite a bit before Clara was born, and she knows how and when Claire died. Anna knows all that, which makes what she says next all the more terrifying. “Like I said, cautiously optimistic, right? But it feels like…” Anna’s eyes glisten with unshed tears, and her smile becomes a little more real. “It’s a miracle I was even able to get pregnant in the first place. Something like this wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t going to turn out okay.”

  “I don’t believe in miracles.”

  “I didn’t think I did either, but one in a million, right?”

  “That’s not a miracle. That’s statistics, and if I knew there was any chance that this might happen, we would’ve been taking precautions the whole time.”

  Anna wears the expression of someone recently slapped. “I didn’t do this on purpose. Don’t act like I tricked you.”

  I scrub a hand down my face, trying not to succumb to panic.

  Tears leak out of the corners of her eyes. “You really wouldn’t want to have this baby with me?”

  I slide out of my chair, take her hands, and pull her up into my arms. Her tears wreck me, but the thought of losing her destroys me. “Of course I would love to have a baby with you, but let’s wait and see what the doctor has to say, okay? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  What the doctor tells us sets ice in my veins. His words bounce around my brain the whole drive home while I wait for Anna to say something reasonable, anything that makes sense. It would be a high risk pregnancy, with a good possibility of very serious complications. There would be little chance of her carrying this baby the entire forty weeks, or of her having a normal delivery. He threw out phrases like, possible placental abruption, and uterine rupture.

  That word rupture pierced through me like a jagged knife.

  “Anna, be reasonable.”

  “He said there was a chance. It’s only a chance something could go wrong.”

  “A very high chance, and it wouldn’t be something going wrong, Anna. You would bleed out, and be gone in minutes. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “This is my one and only chance to have a baby.”

  I park in the driveway of our new home, the house we picked out together. Neither one of us makes a motion to get out of the car. We don’t need Sarah, or anyone else there to witness what is turning into a loud, angry argument.

  I’ve never raised my voice to Anna before, but I did more than that. I pounded the steering wheel with the side of my fist. She smacked her palm on the dashboard. I gestured wildly with a pointed finger, and she waved that grainy, black and white scan in my face. My voice boomed inside the confines of the cruiser. Hers grew just as loud, and turned all sass and hard edges, as her eyes transformed to fiery topaz. “You think I’m gonna get ridda our baby. I ain’t doin it, Jack. Fugetaboutit.”

  I grabbed her face, and kissed her so hard it almost hurt. “If you actually go through with this, and something happens to you, it’s going to kill me. Do you get that? I can’t lose you.”

  “I’m not Claire.”

  “No, shit. Claire would’ve had enough god damned sense to realize this was foolish.”

  “You can either get on board with this, or fuck off and let me do it myself. You’re choice, because I don’t need you.”

  “But I need you.” I broke. I cried like a little pussy, all the anxiety and worry I’ve bottled up since she first told me she was pregnant poured out of my eyes in an unstoppable torrent.

  The anger drained out of Anna’s features and she threw her arms around my neck. “Jack, I’m sorry.” For a moment I thought I’d actually gotten through to her, that she was willing to listen to reason, but then she continued in a soft voice. “Everything is a risk. Just getting behind the wheel of a car, or walking out the front door. Even if I never left the house again, I could slip and fall in the shower. You can’t live your life afraid like that.”

  Didn’t I know it. There was that accident last week, a pickup truck crumpled around a telephone pole, what was left of the guy inside barely recognizable as human. I’ve responded to those calls - I haven’t heard the sweet, old lady upstairs stomping around for a few days, and her dog is going crazy.

  Bad shit happens. I get it, but this is different. That doctor didn’t just say there was a chance something might happen. He specifically cautioned her against continuing this pregnancy.

  “Jack, you’re a police officer. You risk your life every day, and I’ve never asked you to give that up.”

  “I would! Is that what I need to do to get you to see reason?” I make a motion with the keys in my hand towards the ignition. “I’ll go turn my badge in right now.”

  With her eyes full of pleading, Anna grabs my hand. “If I do what you’re asking me to do… I can’t. I love you, but I don’t want to resent you.”

  There were no more raised voices after we got out of the car, but the argument was far from over. We entered into a silent, frigid stalemate. We laid in bed beside each other, but didn’t touch. We sat across from each other, but didn’t speak. This wasn’t an issue we could compromise on. She wants to go against this doctor’s recommendation, and risk her own life, and I can’t just sit by and go along with it. I can’t.

  But I can’t stay mad at her either. Three nights later I gather her up in my arms, and bury my face in her hair. I breath in deep her familiar scent, vanilla and cloves. I trace my fingers over her skin that is silk, but compact, lean strength beneath. “You think you’re invincible, don’t you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  But I think she does. She’s been through some shit and come out on the other side of it swinging. I’ve listened to her and Gregory talk about dancing with broken toes, bleeding through shoes, like soldiers trading war stories. I press my palm over that jagged line across her lower belly, and she weeps quietly. I’m not thinking about the little spark of life inside her right now, like she probably is. I’m thinking about how close she came to dying once already, and how she’s throwing herself right back into the fire. “Please don’t do this, Anna.”

  “I really feel like I have to.”

  “Why? What changed your mind? You were perfectly content with not having children before.”

  “You changed my mind. I’ve never loved anyone enough to want to share that with before. We’ll have a baby that looks a little like you and me both. Don’t you want that for us?”

  “I would love that for us, but not if it means losing you.”

  “You’re not going to lose me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.”

  “Nothing I say is going to change your mind, is it?”

  “No, it’s not.” Anna hugged her arms and legs around me, hanging on tight. “I hate fighting with you, and I do need you, Jack. Please be with me in this.”

  I choke out the single syllable. Okay. That’s how much I love Anna, and need to make her happy, and want to see her smile. Three days of the cold shoulder, silent treatment from her has broke me down, but if I end up losing her, I’m going to break completely.

  Chapter 30

  Jack

  Six Years Later

  I fit the contoured helmet over Wyatt’s mop of dark curls. His features are a mixture of both Anna and I. Her eyes. My mouth. Her cheekbones. My nose. He grins up at me as I snap the strap beneath his chin. He stands patiently for me while I double check the straps of the
body harness fitted around his small frame.

  Wyatt is nothing like Sarah was at this age, hyper and restless. His brown eyes sparkle with contained excitement, but he listens quietly while I explain how I’ll have control of the top rope as he climbs, so he'll remains perfectly safe the whole time.

  At only five years old, he still seems a bit young for it, but there are other kids his age out here at the indoor climbing gym, and he’s eager to follow in his sister’s footsteps.

  Sarah is nearly fourteen, although she hardly looks it, but her small stature doesn’t slow her down. Across the way, she traverses a more difficult, angled wall quickly like a nimble spider. She prefers to climb outside, but her real passion is cheerleading, just like her Aunt Jamie.

  Thanks to her size, and general lack of fear, Sarah has been promoted to flyer. I routinely have to watch my baby girl get hoisted to the top of a pyramid three high, and tossed around like a sack of potatoes.

  When she came back from cheer camp with an egg sized knot on her head after being dropped, my first instinct was to lock her in the house and never let her out of my sight again, but Jamie’s right I guess. Kids are kids, and accidents happen. I can’t swaddle her in bubble wrap to keep her safe, no matter how much I’d like to at times.

  Jamie eventually moved out a few years ago, and she recently reconnected with Clara’s father quite by accident. He’s… not as big of a piece of shit as her ex, which isn’t saying a whole lot. I’m trying to keep an open mind, but he’s got a helluva past. To his credit, he seems to be trying to do right by the daughter he didn’t know existed until she was nearly five.

  My sister sure can pick ‘em, that’s all I can say.

  “Sarah, come watch me climb,” Wyatt calls out.

  She repels down fast, unhinges the carabiner attached to her harness, and skips over in our direction. Kneeling down, she taps her chalky fingers on the lowest climbing hold, guiding her brother’s movements. “Put your foot right here.”