It didn’t take long to get Laura back on her feet and at rehearsals. As they stood across the room from each other for their final fitting for their costumes, he had to keep apologizing to the costumer’s assistant. “Sir, would you please turn this way?”

His attention was focused on Laura across the room. Her smaller stature called for some alterations and he’d learned words that he’d never had a use for, like ‘short-waisted,’ ‘bodice,’ ‘closure,’ and ‘décolletage.’ The last one was always going to make him blush.

But there was something about seeing Laura in a gown from another era, her long neck and gently sloped shoulders were shown off by the neckline of the gown as if she was carved from marble and about to be put on display in an art museum.

She’d told him the name of the color about half a dozen times and still he couldn’t seem to summon the word into his head, not when she turned in a graceful circle before the three-way mirror on the far side of the room.

“Um, sir?”

“Sorry, what?”

The assistant hung his head for a moment, but when he looked back up, he was smiling. “Maybe we should have done your fittings separately?”

Matthew nodded. “Maybe. Again, I’m sorry.”

Tugging at the tape measure around his neck and reaching into his vest pocket for the little piece of blue tailor’s chalk. “If I had a dollar for every time you’ve said that in the last,” he took a quick look at the clock on the wall, “I’d be able to take myself out for steak tonight.”

Matthew opened his mouth and the assistant held up his index finger. “Don’t, please don’t apologize again.” Then he turned his hand to point his finger to Matthew’s left. “That way, please.”

As he turned, he caught Laura’s gaze in his mirror and she shook her head at him, smiling enough that he knew she had to be laughing in her head.

He didn’t mind.

He loved seeing her smiles.

He loved having her fall asleep on his shoulder. Especially when Juliet was on the other side, squishing him in the middle of the couch.

And if he was being truly honest with himself, he would admit that there wasn’t anything about Laura Chun that he didn’t love.

He knew Juliet felt the same way. He hadn’t needed to ask her. Nearly every conversation had some kind of mention of her.

Okay, maybe quite a few mentions of her.

Lost in his thoughts he barely heard the laughter approaching, or the long-suffering sigh that accompanied it.

“You look ‘quite put out,’ Felix.”

Matthew turned to see Laura standing at the edge of his mirror, already back in her rehearsal clothes, including the heavy hoop-skirt all of the party mothers wore to get used to them. ‘Hoop-skirt,’ another term he could add to his growing vocabulary.

“Well, Laura,” the assistant sighed, “he’s new... so I’ll give him a break, but,” the man stood from his crouched position near the floor and gave Laura a fond look, “if you would be so kind as to stand directly within his eye-sight, I think we can get this fitting done so you both can actually make it to rehearsal on time.”

“Oh,” she cast a look at him and Matthew shook his head, “I’m not that bad.”

Laura and Felix shared identical owlish stares before Felix leaned in and shook his head. “At one point you were so busy staring across the room, I stuck you with a pin and you didn’t even notice.” He turned back to Laura. “You have mesmerized him, girlfriend.”

He should have blushed. He should have said something to brush off the other man’s words, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t need to.

Mesmerized?

It fit.

And Felix wasn’t the only one to notice.

Iris’ Spotify Holiday Channel had started with the opening of the Nutcracker and he’d actually walked out of his office and danced with her. The receptionist had only stepped on his feet a few times and stammered out a half-dozen apologizes, but he hadn’t noticed.

Again, his attention was somewhere else.

Laura edged past Felix, taking hold of a hoop from her skirt and tilting it up so that she didn’t knock him over with her added circumference.

And as she scooted by, she pointed down toward her feet. “Look, Felix! My ankles are showing.”

“Ah, the old societal mores. Thank goodness fashion has evolved from that point.”

“But,” Laura interjected, “was it fashion that changed, or our perceptions?”

Felix worked at the hem on Matthew’s left leg. “Ah, we have a philosopher in our midst, Mr. Benson.”

Matthew was surprised at how much of Felix’s comments he could understand while the man had a bunch of wickedly long pins pinched tight at the corner of his mouth.

“She certainly keeps me on my toes.”

“Oh, really,” came Felix’s arched response, “careful, Laura, he’ll be stealing your old pointe shoes next.”

Laura’s good mood seemed to dim and Matthew worried that Felix had brought up some bad memories for Laura.

And then she surprised him again, giving him a smile instead of a frown. “If you fit my old toe-shoes, I’ll kill myself.”

Matthew knew he was missing something, but looking between the two people at his side he knew they hadn’t.

Felix took pity on him. “She’s using a line from ‘While You Were Sleeping.’”

Still nothing.

Felix cast a look over his shoulder. “You need to correct this.”

Matthew swallowed. Hard. “What?”

“What Felix means is that we’re going to have to watch the movie. I think it’s safe for Juliet to watch. I was just taking a line from the show where Bill Pullman’s character Jack rips his jeans open in the back and he asks Sandra Bullock’s character Lucy if she has any spare jeans in her apartment.”

“And,” Felix looked up, with one less pin between his lips, “she tells him ‘If you fit my jeans, I’ll kill myself. See? Nothing scary. Relax, Matthew.”

And relax was what they did. The next day before their final dress rehearsal, they picked up what amounted to be a picnic and sat in the car watching the movie on Matthew’s laptop. It was kind of a drive-in theater with a smaller screen and much better sound once they’d connected the Bluetooth to the car’s stereo.

It was the perfect way to start the final dress rehearsal. When they all parted ways at the door leaning down to the dressing rooms, Matthew gave his daughter a gentle kiss on her forehead.

“Okay, what’s up?”

He looked down at his daughter. “About?”

She gave him a shrewd look that reminded him a little too much of himself to ease his mind. “You’ve got a secret and you’re not sharing.”

Okay.

“Well, it’s not so much a secret as a surprise.”

She rolled her eyes. “You say potato, and I say whatever.”

He wasn’t going to correct the phrase, not unless he wanted to dig himself a deeper hole with his too-smart daughter. “You will find out tonight at our ‘After Dress Rehearsal’ celebration dinner. You’ll like it. I promise.”

“Hmph.” She folded her arms across her chest, but there was a smile on her lips. “I better.”

She flounced off toward her dressing room and he rolled his own eyes this time. Finally having a reason to.

That night, after rehearsal, at what was likely their thirtieth ‘celebratory’ dinner, because he and Juliet seemed to find any little reason to invite Laura out to eat with them. When it was just a meal, it seemed easier for her to turn them down. So far, they’d been batting a thousand on celebration invites, but tonight was hopefully going to be a real celebration.

Tonight, he was going to ask her if they could date. Not just casually. There was nothing casual with what he felt for Laura. He wanted to date her seriously. Something he’d only done once before in his life and he’d married that woman.

He knew that Juliet wouldn’t mind being left in the dark if Laura said yes. And sure, he was putting his heart on the line, but that’s what he had to do.

During their conversations, Laura, whether she’d done it on purpose or just blurted out the words, kept talking about ‘when this was over.’

He had a feeling she wasn’t just talking about the rehearsals and the performances, but their time together as a whole. Matthew wasn’t ready to let it end.

Well, the performances, sure. It wasn’t that hard to imagine life ‘off’ of the stage. He didn’t have that bug like Juliet... and Laura, but he wanted more time for them together. As a family, but as a couple as well.

Turning toward his dressing room, his phone pinged in his pocket. He was expecting some kind of pithy ‘good luck’ text from Brigid, just not in those words. Apparently wishing a dancer ‘good luck’ was like unleashing the plague in a roomful of people, dropping a half-dozen mirrors, and crossing paths with a score of black cats while walking under a whole archway of ladders.

He’d made the mistake the other day and he was surprised that Laura and Juliet didn’t scrub his mouth out with soap. He did have to spring for a box of Godiva Chocolates, but he wasn’t quite sure how that would cancel out the bad luck. Still, he wasn’t going to argue with the two ballerinas in his life.

He didn’t want to suffer any more than he’d already done. Those chocolates weren’t cheap.

And worth every penny as the two hovered over the box, dividing up the chocolates based on the ‘map’ of flavors.

His phone pinged again and he looked down to read the message.

ANDREA – Coming by the theater tonight. Can’t make the performances. Going on vacation.

Andrea. Great.

Aimee’s sister, Andrea, was Juliet’s only surviving relative on her mother’s side of the family and while neither of them really enjoyed spending time with her, it was one of the ways that they kept Aimee’s memory alive.

It would have to make do, he shrugged. If Andrea came to the theater and told Juliet to ‘Break a Leg,’ that would go a long way to creating some kind of familial relationship between the two, something he believed that Aimee would want.

Lifting up his phone he typed out a quick message to Andrea.

MATTHEW – Glad you can come to the rehearsal. Juliet would love to have you tell her to ‘Break a Leg’ for her first role. Give the guard my name at the door and stay for a few minutes to see her dance in the Party Scene.

He was fairly certain that whether or not he’d managed to tell Andrea that he was also dancing in the show, she wouldn’t have remembered it, so he wasn’t going to mention that he’d be on stage as well.

This was about Juliet.

That was all that mattered.

“Ah-hem!”

Turning around, Matthew saw Felix waiting for him by the dressing room door. “Come on in. I have time to do your make up now, Mr. Benson.”

The overly formal method of speech fit perfectly with the somber suit that Felix wore. Along with being the assistant costumer, he was also playing the Butler in the party scene and later one of the Spanish Chocolates in the second half.

Matthew turned off the ringer on his phone and dropped it in his pocket. Andrea would either find them or not. It wasn’t something he had to worry about.

He didn’t have to worry about Andrea finding him. He didn’t even have to worry that she’d just slip out of the theater and not say hello to her niece.

No. She was perfectly capable of zeroing in on him.

As they exited Clara’s house after the party, Laura’s hand tucked into the crook of his arm and Juliet holding his free hand on the other side, he saw someone step away from the rigging back stage.

He didn’t even need to see her face to know who it was. His sister-in-law had a very singular way of walking, as if everything and everyone in her path was fair game. It didn’t matter that she wore the same flat heeled loafers she wore every day, she would likely work up enough momentum to tread over Mount Rushmore if the rock face displeased her.

Thankfully he was the current focus of her irritation.

Marching up to him, she didn’t stop until her toes were pressing down on the tips of his as her eyes traveled over the Victorian Era dark grey suit with its soft blue cravat meant to compliment Laura’s dress. Laura faded back into the wings. He was grateful for the gesture, she had to know something was up.

“Good Evening, Andrea.” He gave her a smile almost as well rehearsed as their last waltz. “So nice of you to come and see Juliet.”

Just to make sure she knew who he was talking about, he gestured at his daughter.

Andrea opened her mouth to speak but managed to take a quick look in the direction of his hand. Whatever she had been about to say fell silently from her lips.

Matthew allowed himself a moment to just breathe. “How much of the party scene did you watch?”

She turned toward him like a typewriter carriage returning back to the starting point: hard, sharp, and he swore it made an ominous click. “I saw enough.”

“Dad?” Juliet’s hold on his hand tightened.

Matthew heard the soft worry in his daughter’s voice and wanted to salvage what he could of Andrea’s visit.

“If there’s something wrong, why don’t the two of us go outside the theater and talk.”

“Talk?” Her voice seemed to rise into the highest part of the theater, climbing the ropes into the rafters where the unneeded backdrops ‘flew’ into hiding. “There’s nothing to talk about, is there?”

It was one of those ‘traps.’ He recognized it for the landmine that It was and tried to step to the side. “Again, Andrea. If you have something to say... at all, let’s go outside, the rehearsal is still going on and extra noise isn’t allowed backstage.”

He knew the moment he’d crossed Andrea’s invisible line of outrage. Her eyes widened and he could see the one thing that she apparently shared with Aimee, which was the color of her eyes. Andrea drew in a breath that seemed to make her a few inches taller in the process.

“If you’re going to destroy my sister’s memory, the least you could do was not to flaunt it in my face.”

The music play back in the theater stopped and Matthew saw the horrified looks on both Juliet and Laura’s faces.

“Sir? Ma’am?” The Stage Manager stepped up and gestured to the side door. “Why don’t the two of you go outside and finish your... conversation?”

Matthew couldn’t agree more. He gestured to the door that one of the stage hands was already holding open and watched as Andrea strode out and into the night.

He crouched down a little and gave his daughter a smile. “Why don’t you stay here with Laura. I’ll be back in just a little bit, okay?”

He looked up and easily found Laura. She hadn’t gone far. Without a word from him, she reached out her hand and he watched Juliet cross to Laura’s side, taking her hand, and leaning into her side, making her hoopskirt bell a little to the side. He mouthed at her. ‘I’LL BE RIGHT BACK.”

And then he walked out after his sister-in-law like she was a fire-breathing dragon.

Matthew had no idea how apt that description was going to prove.