Page 29 of The Dancer and the Dark
If her father had been sentimental, Chloe might have read some meaning into a reserved man having the gardenia as a favorite flower, but her mother told her years later that Grandmother Reardon had won multiple prizes for her gardenias when her father was growing up in Georgia. So Chloe figured gardenias probably symbolized winning for her father.
Which fit better than unexpressed love.
Her parents’ garden was a formal arrangement with a gazebo marking the end of a lush lawn that ran from the back sitting area past the rectangular pool and on through an alley of crepe myrtles and agapanthus that nodded their bright purple heads as she walked by.
Zain was sitting in the gazebo when she found him, playing something on his phone.
“Hey you.” He patted the seat next to his, staring at the house. “This is the most Southern house and garden I’ve ever seen in LA.”
She sat and leaned back against the wooden railing. “Yeah, they did their best to re-create their childhoods, didn’t they?”
“Uh-huh.” He looked down at her. “You tired of the mourners yet?”
“I was tired of them days ago.” She watched the late-afternoon sun hit the pure white siding of the colonial house. “Who’s driving Gavin over?”
Zain frowned. “It’s just him; he’ll fly.”
“Right.” She took a deep breath. “Do you think we can leave for New York tomorrow? Or tonight?”
His eyebrows went up. “You that ready to leave LA, huh?”
“I’m tired of all this.” She waved a hand in front of the house. “My mother, her sisters, my dad’s family. I don’t know any of them anymore. They’re all doctors and lawyers and… well, Keisha does something with robotics programing in Boston—I have no idea what any of that is. All my cousins are married or engaged or having babies with their spouses. There are four children under five in that house, and I don’t know any of their names.”
Zain chuckled, then looked at Chloe’s face. “You feeling some kind of way about that?”
“I don’t know them,” she said. “And they treat me like some kind of oddity. ‘You still doing that dancing thing?’ A few of them asked if I was in a Broadway show and then laughed when I told them I just performed at Lincoln Center.”
“That show was incredible. We caught the livestream the night of the premier.”
“It was great, right?” She laughed. “And they don’t care. At all. I could be stripping and they’d probably see it about the same way.”
“Those girls do put the work in though.”
She smiled. “You’d never catch me arguing.”
Zain put his arm around Chloe’s shoulders and they sat in silence, watching the sun drop lower over the manicured backyard.
He squeezed her shoulders. “Just because they’re blood doesn’t mean they’re family.”
“I know that.” She sighed. “But they are.”
“Your mom falling apart without her daughter at her side?”
“No, she was fine as soon as Aunt Sheila got here.”
“So…” Zain shrugged. “Go home. Throw a few pints back at the Dancing Bear, go shopping with your weird fashion friend—”
“Arthur isn’t weird; he’s gifted.”
“He wanted to dye my dreadlocks pink.”
Chloe couldn’t stop her laugh. “I mean… Okay, I’d forgotten about that, but he’s really very normal in other ways, I promise.”
“He and Tenzin buddies?”
“As much as she is with any human who doesn’t know about vampires.”
“Then I rest my case.” He squeezed her shoulder one more time and let her go. “I love seeing you, but when my grandpa died, all I wanted was to be home. So go home. Be withyourpeople, not your mom’s. Mourn in whatever way you need to mourn.” Zain looked at the house. “They’re not… maybe they never have been your people. They definitely aren’t anymore.”
