Dancing in the Dark

The first thing she saw was her mother’s white, pinched face.

The second was Seth, leaning across the table and holding the woman’s hands, focusing so intently on her that he was oblivious to everything else.

“There you are,” Gina said, when Wendy reached their table and sat down. She scooted forward and leaned in close. “Oh, baby, I saw.”

“Saw what?” Wendy asked calmly, picking up her spoon. The soup, so delicious moments ago, tasted like wormwood. “Mmm. This is wonderful.”

“Wendy, did you hear me? I know what upset you. I saw Seth.”

“Do I look upset? Eat your soup, Mom.”

“If you weren’t upset, why did you run off like that?”

Wendy looked at Gina. “I admit I was...surprised. I’m fine now.” She spooned up some soup. “The soup’s getting cold.”

“Wendy, this is silly. We wanted to have a fun evening. Let’s just get our check and go someplace else.”

“No!” Wendy leaned forward, voice pitched low. If she left now, she’d be running away, and why on earth should she run? She’d found her resolve in a one-sided dialogue with a toy panda and she was going to keep it. “You were the one who kept telling me I needed to get out and do stuff, Mom. Well, here I am, out with you, having dinner, and I’m not going to split just because an old boyfriend is here with his date.”

Gina looked unconvinced. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely.” Wendy smiled, shoveled another spoonful of soup into her mouth and choked it down. “Come on. Talk to me. Tell me about school. Do you still have the same horrid principal, or did the board finally get rid of her?”

“We have someone new,” Gina said, with obvious reluctance.

Wendy nodded, asked another question. Her mother answered. The topic was an old one; Wendy knew Gina had been one of the teachers who’d lobbied for a change. If she got her mother talking about it, maybe she’d carry the conversation.

It took a few minutes, but it worked. Gina was passionate on the subject of giving good teachers administrative support, not dictums, and she got caught up in the topic. Unfortunately, Wendy didn’t. She tried hard, but her attention kept wandering to Seth and the scene playing out at his table. It was like cruising past an accident on the highway. You didn’t want to look but you just couldn’t help it.

She couldn’t see much of the woman, only her slender back, straight shoulders and long, straight, silky blond hair, the kind that she probably never had to gel or blow-dry into submission. She was undoubtedly pretty, too. Pretty girls had always hung around Seth when they were going together. He was oblivious to his appeal, as if he’d never looked in the mirror and noticed that he was good-looking. He’d been as polite and friendly to the ski bunnies who asked for his help getting up on their feet as he was to the experienced skiers whose bindings seemed to be too loose whenever he was in sight.

Wendy had teased him unmercifully.

“Hi, Seth,” she’d say in a simpering whisper. “Could big ol’ you help little ol’ me? Pretty please? I want to do a snowplow. Oh, no, don’t show it to me. Put your arms around me and demonstrate.” Then she’d bat her lashes. “I’ll learn a lot faster that way.”

Seth would tease her right back. “At least all of that goes on in front of you,” he’d say. “What about all those guys who look at you as if you were a mug of hot soup on a cold day when you’re off skiing in Vail and I’m here in New England?”

“I don’t have time to flirt,” she’d say with mock indignation. “I spend those days working.”

“Yeah?” he’d say. “What kind of work?”

Which would be her cue to give him a come-hither smile and slip her arms around his neck.

“Not this kind,” she’d purr, and then she’d kiss him, and the teasing would give way to passion.

The truth was, they’d both had eyes only for each other, right from the beginning. The differences between them—she longed for Olympic gold and he for a quiet life with her—hadn’t mattered. They’d loved each other enough to get past those things.

“...visit my classroom,” Gina said, “and you’ll see...”

What Wendy saw was that they’d been too young to realize that it wouldn’t have worked. They were too different. Hadn’t what happened to her proved that? Her dream had destroyed his. One bad fall and their future together had ended.

Years before, she’d taken the first step toward setting them both free. She’d sent Seth away, and look how well it had worked. He’d moved on, gone from holding down a casual job on a ski slope and tucking in occasional business courses to becoming a skilled craftsman. In a part of her heart, she’d always known she’d have held him back. Her career would have had to come first, had they married.

Now he’d found someone to love. A woman who held his attention as she’d once held it.

“Mom?” Wendy interrupted Gina in midsentence. “What’s her name?”

Her mother glanced at the other table, looked quickly away and pushed aside her soup bowl.

“Who?” she said, with an innocent lift of her eyebrows.

“Mother...”

Gina sighed. “Joanne. Joanne Cabot. And don’t ask me for details because I don’t know anything more.”

“What does she do? Does she live in Cooper’s Corner? How long has Seth been seeing her?”

“She’s a legal secretary. She lives in New Ashford and he’s been seeing her for two or three months.”

Wendy almost smiled. “You don’t know anything more, huh?”

“No. Not a thing.”

“Yeah, well, I’m glad he’s happy.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be? I—I cared for him once, remember?”

But she wasn’t happy. The ugly truth was that it hurt to see the warmth in his amber eyes as he looked at another woman the same way he’d looked at her that last night they’d been together, when he’d asked her to give up Lillehammer and marry him.

Seth, she thought, oh, Seth.

He glanced up as if he’d heard her, and his eyes widened with shock. The woman with him—Joanne—must have noticed because she turned around, looked over her shoulder and saw Wendy.

Her face drained of color. She pulled her hands free of Seth’s. He said something. She answered. He spoke again and she stiffened.

Wendy pushed back her chair.

“Wendy,” Gina said with quiet urgency, “what are you doing?”

“I’m going over to say hello to Seth and his girlfriend,” Wendy replied calmly.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s the right thing to do, Mother. They just saw me. They’re not happy about it, and that’s silly. There’s no reason for all of us to be uncomfortable. W

e’re adults.”

It was a lie. An adult wouldn’t hear her pulse hammering in her ears as she rose to her feet and walked past the fireplace. An adult wouldn’t feel her lips tremble as she smiled.

But Seth wasn’t smiling. He was glowering, and he stood up just as she got to his table.

“Hi,” she said brightly. “I just noticed you sitting over here and I thought I’d—”

“Wendy.” His voice was low. “Your timing’s bad.”

Wendy’s hard-won smile faded at the edges. “So much for being adult,” she started to say, but Joanne made a strangled sound, shot to her feet and hurried toward the door. Seth snarled an oath, dumped a handful of bills on the table and went after her.

Wendy could almost hear the silence; she could feel people trying not to stare. She wanted to crawl away, to become invisible. Instead, she walked back toward her mother. Gina was already standing in the aisle with Wendy’s coat in her arms.

“Go on,” Gina said quietly. “I’ll meet you outside.”

Wendy nodded, kept her eyes straight ahead and made her way to the door.

“How was everything?” the hostess asked as she brushed past her.

“Fine,” she answered. What else could she say? Surely not that she should never have come home, not even for the hope of five minutes alone with Rodney Pommier.

She stepped out the door into a night that was black as ink and cold as only these hills could be in midwinter. The darkness and the cold were welcome. One wrapped her in blessed anonymity; the other was a balm to her hot-cheeked humiliation. She yearned for her own car so she could escape, but she had to wait for her mother.

Wendy turned up her collar, put on her gloves and headed around the side of the building, away from people and the bright fairy lights that adorned the door and windows of the restaurant.

She’d spent half the flight from France to the U.S.A. suffering over how tough it was going to be to face people who’d known her when she was whole, how awful it would be to have them look at her, and know they were pitying her.

The bittersweet truth was that nothing was as old as yesterday’s fame. Nobody had stared at her...