Page 11 of The Dancer and the Dark
Chloe often wondered if her father’s empathy and softness had died when he lost his mother. His relationship with Chloe’s mother had felt more like a partnership to produce superior offspring than any kind of relationship. They were both physicians with stellar reputations and phenomenal professional success, her mother in cardiology and her father in oncology.
John Washington Reardon and Clara Brown-Reardon had one child, and to them she was an utter disappointment.
Chloe.
She turned to Audra. “I’m fine. I promise. I ate something when we boarded.”
“Are you drinking enough? After my mom passed, I had headaches for days and I thought they were related just to the grief, but I hadn’t been drinking anything.”
Chloe raised a bottle of water. “I’m good. Promise.”
And she wasn’t grieving. Chloe didn’t know what that meant or what grief should look like when the parent who died had treated her as if she was an embarrassment for over ten years.
The Doctors Reardon had never seen Chloe’s career as a dancer with anything but disdain. Dancing wasn’t a profession—it was a hobby.
Her practice meant nothing. Her discipline meant nothing. Dancing in off-Broadway shows wasn’t a serious job that would impress their intellectual friends or contribute to the betterment of the world, and that was all that mattered to them.
While their friends’ children were following their parents into medical school, or at the very least law school, Chloe had packed up her stuff and moved to New York to live in a shitty third-floor walk-up apartment with three other girls, usher at theaters that wouldn’t hire her, and fall into an abusive relationship with a finance bro.
She closed her eyes. Fuck. No wonder her parents never took her seriously.
The abusive relationship might have been in the past, but from her parents’ perspective, Chloe had just traded one rich boyfriend for another. They’d met Gavin, but they were unimpressed to hear that he owned an entertainment group that included clubs, theaters, and bars around the world.
Had he gone to college?
Did he have a degree?
What did his parents do?
All those questions Gavin had fielded with as much grace as possible, but Chloe couldn’t bring herself to subject him to their interrogations more than a few times over the five years they’d been together.
Audra settled next to her. “We’ll land in Burbank; that’s the fastest airport to get you home.”
“Yep. Ben told you I’m staying at his place, right? His uncle’s place? At least when we first get there.”
“Yes.”
Of course, her parents only lived about a mile from Ben’s aunt and uncle.
Her mother lived there. Not her father. Not anymore.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Has anyone heard from Gavin?”
“We can’t get any signal in here,” Audra said. “With the insulation they use to customize these for vampires—”
“Right.” Chloe nodded. “I knew that.”
She did know that; her brain was just mush.
Your father is dead.
When was the last time she’d talked to him? His birthday? Probably. What had they talked about? Chloe couldn’t even remember it that clearly. He’d mentioned a sport-fishing trip with friends. Said something about his partner’s son graduating from Johns Hopkins. Or was it a residency? It had been months.
Chloe tried to think of her most positive memories of her father, but her mind was coming up blank. Dance recitals? When she was little, he’d sometimes been at her dance recitals if he wasn’t working. When she wasverylittle, he’d greeted her at the end of a recital with flowers.
Little girls in tutus were adorable. Teenage daughters pursuing “foolish dreams” weren’t so charming. Her father had been the one to make it clear: she went to college for a respectable field of study that contributed to the greater good, or she got nothing when she left their home.
Nothing.
