Part 4
“Then don’t keep June waiting,” Daniel said.
He opened the gate from the panel in his study and stayed there while Isaiah crossed the garden alone. The boy wore the dance shoes Daniel had bought, but the frayed backpack was still slung over one shoulder. In his hand was a spiral notebook with three loose pages sticking out.
June was beneath the pergola drawing. She saw him, put down her pencil, and did not smile immediately.
“Your robot still has no emotional range,” she said.
Isaiah stopped on the other side of the table. “He’s been through a lot.”
“That’s not character development.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. He sat, leaving a full chair between them.
“Did my dad ask you to come?” June asked.
“No.”
“Camille?”
“She drove me. That’s different.” Isaiah kept the notebook on his side of the table. “Nobody called. The apartment stayed ours. So I got to choose.”
June picked at the corner of her drawing. “And you decided what?”
“My instructor wants me to audition for the fall student company. I need a second choreographer, and you’re bossy.”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“It wasn’t all a compliment.” He looked down at the notebook. “I missed you too.”
June nodded once. “I’m still mad.”
“Me too.”
“At me?”
“At the whole thing.” Isaiah slid the notebook into the empty chair between them. “And I’m not dancing every time.”
June pulled the notebook onto her lap. “Fine. Then don’t ask me whether I stood at therapy.”
Neither child filled the silence that followed. Isaiah finally pointed to a penciled sequence on the first page and said June should hit both wheel rims on the fourth count. She told him the move made her look as if she were braking at a traffic light, and the argument began from there.
Daniel moved away from the study window. The household calendar still showed a blank square for that afternoon.
Eleven months later, in late August, Camille and three dancers from Isaiah’s program came through the side gate for a final garden rehearsal before the fall showcase. She and Isaiah were still in the two-bedroom apartment, with the lease in her name and him listed as a resident. The Magnolia had come down only after the last occupied room was cleared and every resident had a documented housing plan. Camille still declined more of Daniel’s offers than she accepted.
June had returned to school four mornings a week and still used her wheelchair; no one promised that would change. She could make a clean floor transfer and stand briefly in braces, though pain, fatigue, and furious boredom still claimed whole weeks.
For the showcase, June had written separate patterns for chair work, floor work, and standing dancers.
Daniel sat on the grass near the pergola, his phone untouched in his pocket and no stopwatch in his hand.
Isaiah kicked off his dance shoes before stepping onto the lawn. This time there were no holes in the soles; he simply liked the feel of the ground. June rolled into place beside him and checked the angle of her wheels.
He looked at her, waiting. June struck one rim, then the other. “Five, six, seven, eight.”