I shrugged, picking up my water and downing half of it in one go. “I want to be able to say I finished a routine and nailed it.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What then? What comes after?”
There was a pause where she eyed me suspiciously while I shifted on my feet, water bottle in my hand with a white-knuckle grip around the plastic. “Then I learn a new one.”
I got back into position and waited for her to turn the music on. Instead, she said, “You know, Judith asked about you the other day. She heard you were dancing again.”
My stomach hurt. “So?”
“So…I confirmed you were.”
I dropped my arms. “Why would you do that? She’s going to think I’m coming back. It’s bad enough Sophie made everybody else think that. I was hounded for weeks.”
“I wasn’t going to lie, Della.”
Again, I chose not to say anything.
Tiffany studied me with intense eyes that I avoided as I closed mine and evened my breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. My heart rate came down naturally, just in time for me to raise it again if she turned the damn music on instead of interrogating a pointless matter.
“One day you’re going to tell me what’s bothering you,” I heard her say.
Another lie slipped past my parted lips before I could stop it. “Yeah. One day.”
There was a light tap on the door that told me it wasn’t the man who usually showed up despite my wishes. He hadn’t tried to reach out to me because he knew better. Hadn’t shown up. Hadn’t texted. So, it was only a matter of time before he sent somebody else.
Wiping off my hands on the overalls covering my body, I noted the way they fit even looser around the waist but ignored it. Padding over to the front door, I looked through little hole to see light hair with natural highlights similar to mine in the sunlight. The blonde tones made me blink, my hand hesitating to undo the locks before opening to find my aunt behind it.
“Lydia?”
She smiled at me, timid and small, her height an inch or two taller than me, but her features always tentative. “Hello, Della. May I come in?”
Stepping aside, I gestured for her to walk past me, closing the door behind her before turning in curiosity. “Not that I mind, but what are you doing here? You never visit.”
Her lips twitched. “I know I haven’t. That’s something I think about quite often. But that’s why I wanted to see you.”
“You mean, Theo asked you to come?” I walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a glass of water. “Would you like anything to drink?”
“I’m fine.”
I nodded and watched her look around. Her smile grew when she saw a picture of Theo and me from my high school graduation. I was in my cap and gown with my hair curled and a face full of makeup, and Theo was in his typical dress pants and button down shirt with an arm wound around my waist, tucking me into his side. I loved that day. It meant freedom.
In hindsight, that freedom was restricted even when I thought it’d be limitless. And most of that was because of me. I’d been afraid of a lot of things, but mostly of disappointing the ghosts of my past. My mother. Even my father before I’d known the truth. Hell, even after. I was always pressuring myself to be the best, to just be…better. Not of other people. Better than myself. And I knew I was failing at it right now.
“Actually,” Lydia said, “he didn’t. Theo mentioned that you needed some space, but Sophie told him he was being ridiculous. Something about girls your age needing discipline not distance.”
Sounded like Sophie. It made me want to roll my eyes, but I didn’t. Instead, I sat down on the couch while Lydia walked to the TV and studied the frames on the entertainment center the flat screen rested on. Pictures of my parents, of the three of us as a family, one of just Theo. He looked like he always did—not quite smiling, but not scowling either. Not at me, who’d taken that picture when I told him I wanted to go to Central Park.
“Theo knows you better than anybody, so that was why I told Sophie I’d come instead of her. We both know she’d take the wrong approach and come on too strong. I figured I was the lesser of two evils.”
I winced. The last time Sophie had come here she remarked on every piece of furniture she didn’t like, telling me she could buy me better things. Of course she could. Her husband let her buy whatever she wanted to get her off his back. Her taste was the opposite of mine and she knew it. The second I agreed to let her buy me new stuff, I’d lose. Sophie was family and I loved her, but I didn’t want her to think she had any influence or control over me.
“I appreciate it,” I told her honestly.
“You’re painting,” she commented, her attention going toward my overalls. “I still have one of the pictures you drew me when you were little. Do you remember? It was of me and your father. You said you wanted me to have something of us together since we didn’t have many photographs of just the two of us.”
I did remember that. I didn’t understand why the photo album Sophie had given me didn’t have many pictures of them together. Lydia might have come into their lives later, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be part of family photos.
I nodded, a gentle smile forming on my face when she turned to me. “I do. You still have it? I figured all that stuff I drew would be long gone by now. They were awful.”
To my surprise, she laughed. Loudly. Lydia usually only
