to face rows and rows of people again, eyes trained on her, expectant…
Liv brushed her arm in a supportive caress, and Vivien felt a glimmer of maybe.
Maybe someday.
“But not today,” she said, and then, surprising even herself, she did a little soft shoe from a barely remembered routine. She didn’t even know what show it was from, but it felt…good.
Ending with a flourish, Vivien bowed to the invisible audience of her theater’s phantoms and stood there, panting a little, as she looked around.
Maybe.
Maybe someday.
In his perceptive, thoughtful way, Jake had given her something to think about last night.
She shivered with pleasure. What a guy. What an amazing man. Even after more than ten years apart, he understood her in a way that even Helga couldn’t.
A song dropped into her head just then, along with its snappy, happy rhythm. And because, dammit, she was happy right now—and because she’d had an amazing night and Jake was back in her life despite her trying to keep him away—she couldn’t hold it back.
She sang about a boy who’d made her helpless, improvising her own dance routine because she couldn’t ever try to emulate the brilliance of the Hamilton cast.
And when she was done, her voice echoing to the far corners of the theater, out of breath and exuberant, she bowed once more to the ghosts who watched her and thought…
Maybe.
Vivien finally got down to the orchestra pit. Jake had texted wondering where she’d gone, and she told him she’d be back by noon and would make lunch.
His response was a single horrified-eyed emoji that had her laughing as she descended into the pit.
She’d brought a flashlight to help illuminate the way and shined it around even though two bulbs were now working down here.
The trunk was just where they’d left it—closed and silent—but something else had changed.
There on the floor, in a puddle of spangled silk and glittery tulle, was a sequined white ballerina costume that could only belong to The Nutcracker’s Sugarplum Fairy.
It was lying next to the military coat that had belonged to the Nutcracker himself.
Her palms suddenly slick, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, Vivien walked slowly over to the pair of costumes as something Iva or Juanita had said rang in her memory:
I heard the Sugarplum Fairy ran off with the Nutcracker…
It couldn’t be a coincidence that those two costumes had been left here and arranged like this. As she bent to pick up the ballerina costume, a cool breeze buffeted the back of her bare neck and shoulders, raising goosebumps.
“All right,” she said calmly, holding up the costume to look at it. “What do you want me to know about— Oh my God…”
The skimpy little leotard had rents in the back of it, and there were huge, ugly brown stains all over.
Like rust…or blood.
Chapter Twenty
Vivien was huffing and puffing by the time she made it back to Jake’s house—which wasn’t a shock, considering that she’d practically run up the hill from the road where the theater was while she was carrying the Nutcracker’s coat and headpiece, as well as the Sugarplum Fairy’s tutu and the cast show photo.
She could have texted him to come and get her, but she didn’t know what time he got done with his shift, and besides, she was a liberated woman and could handle a big-little hill just fine.
Because she didn’t know whether he was still working, she let herself in as quietly as possible, then dumped her burdens on the living room sofa.
He glanced over, raised his brows at the costumes, and said, “I should be done in about fifteen minutes—I just have to finish this patient and write up my notes.”
“That’s okay, I want to look at this,” she said, picking up the headpiece.
She’d waited to examine it closely until she got back to Jake’s house—better light, and no touchy ghosts, she reasoned, who could have a tantrum at the drop of a hat. Humming “Masquerade” (which, in her opinion, was a perfectly creepy song to accompany this task) and with her skin prickling with excitement and nerves, she took the headpiece over to the kitchen counter, where the light was the brightest.
Just as she’d noted before, the back was caved in, but it didn’t look as if something heavy had crushed it in the trunk. The damage looked more like someone had whacked the headpiece with one blow or punch, for the deep indentation was a single, circular area.
Vivien examined the sharp break in the