Chapter 13: I think I remember most of the steps
The applause for the men’s dance faded into the general hum of the ballroom, a sound like restless ocean in a shell. Belly remained at the edge of the dance floor, a fixed point in the swirl of satin and black tie. Her eyes tracked the retreating backs of the other escorts, searching for one in particular.
Laurel materialized beside Susannah’s chair, her practical flats silent on the polished floor. “Where’s Jere?” she asked, her voice low.
Susannah’s smile was a little distant, her fingers tracing the stem of her water glass. “I don’t know.”
“Connie,” Susannah said, turning her head slightly. Conrad was leaning against a pillar a few feet away, watching the scene with detached focus. “Where’s your brother?”
He pushed off the pillar, his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. He was here a minute ago.” His gaze slid past his mother, past Laurel, and landed on Belly. He held it for a second too long, then looked away, scanning the room himself.
The orchestra began tuning up for the debutantes’ dance. A collective rustle moved through the girls at the table as they stood, smoothing their gowns, finding their partners. Belly watched them pair off—laughing, adjusting boutonnieres, taking practiced holds. Her own hands felt empty.
She turned a slow circle on the floor, the skirt of her dress whispering against her legs. Her eyes swept the perimeter, the open French doors leading to the terrace, the dark mouth of the hallway. No Jeremiah.
A cold knot tightened in her stomach. This was his moment, too. He wouldn’t just leave.
Unless he would.
Heat rushed to her cheeks. She could feel a hundred eyes on her, curious, pitying. The carefully constructed fantasy of the evening cracked, revealing the raw, embarrassing reality beneath. She was being left on the floor. Again.
From his place by the pillar, Conrad watched it happen. He saw the precise moment her hopeful scan turned into bewildered humiliation, the way her shoulders drew in just slightly, as if bracing for a blow. He saw his mother’s vague concern, Laurel’s growing frown. He saw the empty space beside her.
A current went through him, a silent, decisive shift.
He didn’t think. He just moved.
He crossed the floor. He didn’t hurry, but there was no hesitation in his stride. The crowd seemed to part for him.
Belly saw him coming. Her breath hitched. He stopped in front of her, his tall frame blocking the view of the staring crowd. The muted gold light of the chandelier caught the angles of his face, the serious set of his mouth. Up close, she could see the faint tired lines around his eyes, but they were clear, focused on her.
He didn’t offer a hand immediately. He just looked at her, and the ghost of that private smile from earlier tugged at his lips. It was an apology and a challenge all at once. He leaned in, just a little, his voice a low murmur meant only for her.
“I think I remember most of the steps.”
The words were so simple, so utterly Conrad. No grand gesture, no flowery speech. Just a quiet statement of fact and a bridge thrown across the aching gap between them.
Belly felt the panic recede, replaced by a flood of something warmer, something terrifyingly fragile.
Conrad’s hand, warm and sure, closed around hers. He didn’t ask. He just took it and pulled her gently to her marked spot on the parquet floor, He gave her fingers a final, firm squeeze before releasing her and stepping across to Jeremiah’s position. He turned to face her, squaring his shoulders as if bracing for a different kind of storm. The opening notes of the waltz began, sweet and swelling from the strings.
Outside, the night air was cool and carried the distant tang of the ocean. Jeremiah sat on the concrete steps behind the service entrance, his bow tie undone and hanging loose. The glowing screen of his mother’s phone shook in his hand. He’d seen the notification preview, a name he recognized from Boston, a subject line that said “Treatment Plan Review & Next Steps.” The email inside was a cold, clinical wall of text—words like “palliative,” “managing symptoms,” and “quality of life” swam in his vision. A hard, silent sob wracked his shoulders. He pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth, smearing the tears across his cheek.
Inside, Conrad spun halfway, his arm extending. Belly mirrored him, her hand finding his in the center of the space between them. His fingers tightened, and he pulled her into a turn, his other hand settling firmly on the silk at her waist. The world became a blur of candlelight and startled faces. He spun her out once more, the skirt of her dress flaring, then reeled her back in. Her palm landed flat on the shoulder of his jacket, solid and real. His hand returned to her waist, their stance formal, close. They moved into the box step of the square dance, a simple pattern that suddenly felt enormously complicated.
Their eyes locked. Conrad’s were a clear, burning blue in the low light, intent on her face with a focus that made her breath catch. She searched his expression, He wasn’t looking at the room, or the other dancers. He was looking at her. Every point of contact—his hand on her back, hers on his shoulder, their joined hands—hummed with a silent, electric current.
Jeremiah wiped his face with his sleeve, a harsh, angry motion. He took several deep, ragged breaths, sucking in the night air until the tightness in his chest eased into a dull, heavy ache. He stood up, his legs unsteady. He shoved the phone deep into his own pocket, a guilty, toxic weight. He straightened his jacket, retied his bow tie by feel in the dark, and pushed the heavy door open, stepping back into the warmth and noise.
The dance required Conrad to drop to one knee. He did it smoothly, his eyes never leaving hers as she walked a slow, graceful circle around him. The fabric of his trousers stretched taut over his thigh. When he rose, it was in one fluid motion, and he dipped her backwards. Her head tipped, the room inverting for a heartbeat. He held her there, suspended, his face inches from hers. Her breath fanned his cheek. His gaze dropped to her mouth, then back to her eyes, a question and an answer happening all at once in the silence between musical phrases.
Jeremiah wove through the tables, a bland smile plastered on his face. He found his mother, her expression now clouded with worry as she watched the dance floor. “Jere, where were you?” she asked, her hand reaching for his arm.
“I think maybe the shrimp was bad,” he said, the lie smooth and immediate, his voice miraculously even. He gave a weak, self-deprecating shrug.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Susannah said, her worry melting into sympathy. She patted his cheek, her touch cool. “Do you need to go home?”
“No, I’m okay now. Just needed air.” He kept his eyes on her, avoiding the sight happening in the center of the room.
The final note hung in the air. Conrad brought Belly back up, their bodies sliding against each other as he righted her. They stood, frozen in the ending pose, his hand still on her back, hers on his shoulder.
The applause broke the spell, a wave of polite, confused clapping that washed over them. Conrad’s hand slipped from her back, the warmth of his palm lingering on the silk like a phantom touch. He took a small, deliberate step back, putting a necessary inch of ballroom air between them.
“Thank you,” Belly said, looking up at him. Her voice was barely a whisper under the applause.
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it tousled. “I think I messed up some of the steps.”
“You were great,” Belly said, her voice gentle, meant only for him.
A real, quiet smile touched his eyes, softening the tension in his jaw. He looked down at his shoes for a second, then back at her, his gaze direct and unbearably soft. “I’m glad,” he said, the words steady and sure. “I’m glad that it was me.”
She looked at him and smiled, a real one that started in her chest and broke across her face, erasing the last of her earlier humiliation.
A sharp tap landed on Conrad’s shoulder. He flinched, the intimate moment shattering like dropped crystal. They both turned. Jeremiah stood there, his face pale under the golden lights, his eyes red-rimmed and hard. A muscle jumped in his tightened jaw.
“Hey,” Jere said. His voice was flat, devoid of its usual music.
“Jere, where were you?” Belly asked, her smile fading into concern.
He ignored her completely, his focus a laser on his brother. “Conrad, we need to talk. It’s about Mum. I found something out.” He held up the phone in his hand, the screen dark now, a damning piece of evidence.
Conrad’s shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly. He exhaled slowly through his nose. “We’ll talk about this later.” He used his low, careful voice, the one meant to defuse.
“It’s important,” Jeremiah insisted, stepping closer. The smell of night air and salt clung to his jacket.
“It’s okay,” Conrad said, his tone dipping into something resigned and weary. He reached out as if to guide Jeremiah away from the crowd.
Jeremiah looked at him, really looked, and something in Conrad’s resigned expression must have been a confession. His own face crumpled from anger into a raw, bewildered hurt. “You already know, don’t you?” he breathed, the words cracking. “You’ve known this whole time and didn’t tell me?”
“Jere,” Conrad said, a plea and a warning.
Jeremiah swung. It wasn’t a wild punch; it was horrifically precise, a direct, hard crack of his fist against Conrad’s jaw. The sound was a sickening thud of knuckle on bone. Conrad’s head snapped sideways. He stumbled back, colliding with a chair that screeched across the floor, and went down.
“What the hell, Jere!” Belly shouted, lunging forward.
A gasp rippled through the nearest tables. The music from the orchestra faltered, then died. “What is going on?” Susannah’s voice cut through the sudden silence, sharp with alarm.
Conrad pushed himself up on one elbow. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. It came away smeared with a thin, shocking line of red. He got to his feet, movements slow and deliberate. He didn’t look at his brother. He looked at his mother, who was pushing through the crowd, her face a mask of frightened confusion.
“We know, Mum,” Conrad said, his voice rough but clear in the quiet room.
Belly’s head whipped from Conrad’s bloody lip to Susannah’s ashen face. The world seemed to narrow to the three of them standing in a broken triangle on the dance floor. “Know what?” Belly asked, her own voice sounding very small.
Susannah’s hands, which had been fluttery with alarm, went perfectly still at her sides. The forced vibrancy she’d worn all summer drained from her face, leaving behind something weathered and terribly real. She looked from Conrad, standing straight with blood on his lip, to Jeremiah, whose anger was already crumbling into panic. The glittering ballroom, the hushed crowd, it all seemed to shrink away from the three of them.
“Oh,” Susannah said. The word was a soft, broken thing.
“Mum?” Jeremiah’s voice wavered, all his earlier bravado gone. He took a step toward her, the phone trembling in his hand. “What is it? What’s going on?”
Susannah didn’t answer him. She looked past her sons, her gaze finding Laurel’s across the room. A silent, profound understanding passed between them. Laurel gave a small, tight nod and began moving toward Belly, her purpose clear.
“We should go,” Laurel said, her voice low and firm as she reached Belly’s side. She took her daughter’s elbow, her grip gentle but unyielding.
“But—” Belly started, her eyes darting back to Conrad. He wouldn’t look at her. He was staring at a spot on the floor near his mother’s feet, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle pulsed in his cheek.
“Now, Belly,” Laurel said, and guided her through the silent, staring guests. The walk out of the ballroom felt endless, every click of their heels on the marble foyer echoing like a judgment. They didn’t speak in the car. Laurel’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and the world outside the windshield was a dark, smeared watercolor of passing streetlights and shadows.
Upstairs in her childhood room at the summer house, Belly finally broke. The white dress pooled around her on the floor like a melted shell as she sat on the edge of the bed, her entire body shaking. “I feel so stupid,” she choked out, the tears hot and relentless.
Laurel sat beside her, not touching her at first, just a solid, present warmth. “Honey, why would you feel stupid?”
“Because all summer Susannah was sick and I didn’t even know.” Belly wiped her nose with the back of her hand, a childish gesture that made her crying seem even more raw. “We were all just… laughing. And she was…” She couldn’t finish.
“That’s how she wanted it,” Laurel said, her own voice thick. She reached out and smoothed Belly’s tangled hair. “That was the whole point.”
Belly looked up, her brown eyes swimming. “How long have you known?”
Laurel looked away, out the dark window toward the sea. “Since spring.” She took a shaky breath. “She didn’t wanna burden you guys with it. She wanted one last summer with you guys. Just normal. Just… summer.”
The full weight of it, of the secret and the silence and the performances of normalcy, crashed over Belly. She looked at her mother, really looked, and saw the deep, solitary fatigue in the lines around her eyes. “You had to carry it all by yourself,” Belly whispered, the realization a new kind of ache.
Laurel’s composure fractured then. A single, sharp sob escaped her, and she pulled Belly into a fierce, crushing hug. They held onto each other, crying into each other’s shoulders, the room holding the sound of their grief.
The door opened softly. Steven stood there, still in his tuxedo pants and untucked white shirt. His face was pale, his eyes red. He’d heard everything from the hallway. He looked from his crying mother to his crying sister, and the last of his hope seemed to leave him. “She’s not gonna get better, is she?” he asked, his voice flat.
Laurel loosened her hold on Belly, turning her tear-streaked face toward her son. She didn’t offer platitudes. She just shook her head slowly. “No.”
Steven walked over, the fight gone out of him. He didn’t sit so much as fold onto the bed, lying down and curling onto his side like a little boy. He buried his face in his mother’s lap, his shoulders shaking silently. Laurel laid a hand on his head, her fingers trembling as she stroked his hair.
Downstairs, the living room felt cavernous and cold despite the humid night air. Susannah sat in the center of the worn sofa, still in her elegant navy dress from the ball. Jeremiah was perched on the edge of the coffee table facing her, leaning forward as if he could will the situation to change. Conrad stood by the fireplace, his back to the room, staring at the empty grate.
“I’m sorry the night turned out like this,” Susannah said, breaking the heavy quiet. Her voice was worn thin. “It’s not how I wanted you to find out.”
“You’re gonna do the trial, right?” Jeremiah’s words tumbled out, desperate and fast. He sounded like he did when he was ten, begging for a later bedtime. “They have new stuff all the time. You said it yourself.”
Susannah reached out and took his hands in hers. They were cold. “No, honey. I’m not.” She said it softly, with a devastating finality. “I can’t. It was too hard the first time.”
Conrad’s head bowed, his shoulders tightening under his white shirt. He’d taken his jacket off. A faint, dark bruise was already blooming along his jawline.
“You could try,” Jeremiah insisted, his voice cracking. He was squeezing her hands too tightly, but she didn’t pull away. “You have to try.”
“I just wanna be me when I go,” she said, and her voice was so gentle, so utterly herself, that it made the words even more unbearable. “Not sick all over again. Not… lost in it. I want to remember the beach. I want to remember you.”
“None of this makes sense,” Jeremiah whispered, his defiance dissolving into confusion. He dropped her hands and put his own over his face.
“I know.” Susannah’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “I’m not good at this.” She looked past Jeremiah then, to Conrad’s rigid back. A deep, knowing sadness settled over her features. She stood, her movements slightly stiff, and walked to the fireplace. She placed a hand gently between Conrad’s shoulder blades.
He flinched at the touch, then leaned into it, his head bowing even lower.
“I should’ve known you knew,” she murmured, her hand rubbing slow, small circles.
A harsh, ragged breath shuddered out of him. his face was a mask of silent agony, his blue eyes swimming. He didn’t speak.
The silence in the room was a physical weight, pressing down on all of them, broken only by the ragged sound of Jeremiah’s breathing. Conrad finally turned, his face a closed fist of pain. He looked at his brother, who was staring blankly at the floor, then at his mother, who was waiting.
“If there’s a chance you have to tell her, Conrad,” Jeremiah said, not looking up. His voice was mangled.
Conrad looked at him, his own confusion a sharp ache. “Tell her what?”
“That she has to try!” Jeremiah exploded, surging to his feet. He gestured wildly at Susannah. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Mum, you have to try! You can’t just give up!”
“It’s not giving up, Jere,” Susannah said, her voice fraying at the edges. “It’s choosing how I spend the time I have left.”
“Mum, can’t you just try? For us?” The words tore out of Conrad, raw and stripped bare. He took a step forward, his ocean eyes desperate. “I need you, Mum.”
It was the sheer, stark need in his voice, so rarely voiced, that undid her. Susannah’s composure finally shattered. She let the tears fall, two clean tracks cutting through the quiet dignity she’d worn all night. She opened her arms. “Come here.”
Conrad went first, folding into her embrace, his tall frame bending as he buried his face in her shoulder. His back shook. Jeremiah followed after a second’s hesitation, wrapping his arms around both of them, clinging hard. They stood in a tangled knot of grief in the middle of the quiet living room. After a long while, Conrad pulled back, wiping his face harshly with the sleeves of his shirt, the fine white cotton stained with saltwater and the faint smear of blood from his lip.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Laurel slammed a pot of water onto the stove. The violent clang was a release. She ripped open a box of linguine, the brittle snaps satisfying. It was something to do with her hands, a mundane rebellion against the enormity upstairs.
Susannah walked in, her steps slow. She leaned against the doorway, looking exhausted and young all at once. “How’s it going with the boys?” Laurel asked, not turning from the stove.
“I told them I’d do the trial.” Susannah’s voice was a thin whisper. “I couldn’t say no.”
Laurel stopped. She turned and crossed the room in two strides, pulling her best friend into a tight, wordless hug. She held on for a long minute. When she spoke, her voice was fierce against Susannah’s ear. “I don’t care what the doctors say. It’s going to work.”
She pulled back, patting Susannah’s cheek roughly, a gesture of pure, stubborn faith. “Alright, everybody in here!” Laurel called out, her voice carrying up the stairs. “We have to eat.”
They ate at the crowded kitchen table, a silent, strange mimicry of a hundred summer meals. The only sounds were the scrape of forks on plates and the crinkle of the wax paper around the bread. Steven pushed peas around. Jeremiah stared at his food as if it were a foreign substance. Conrad ate methodically, automatically, his eyes fixed on a knot in the wooden table.
When he was finished, he stood without a word and walked out the screen door. It slapped shut behind him.
Belly watched him go from her seat. She waited five minutes, then followed. The night air was a cool balm after the stifling kitchen. She found him sitting at the tide line, still in his suit pants and white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up. He was staring at the dark, breathing water.
She sat down next to him, the cool sand instantly soaking through her jeans. For a while, they just listened to the waves.
“I can’t believe she said yes to the trial,” he finally said. His voice was hoarse.
“You did it,” Belly said softly. “She changed her mind.”
He shook his head, still looking at the ocean. A wave rushed up, the foam licking close to his shoes before retreating. “It wasn’t me.” He turned his head then, and the moonlight caught the vivid blue of his eyes, the bruise on his jaw. “It was Jere.”