Chapter 3: A Name on the Card

On Friday morning, Clare found Henry waiting outside the community center with two coffees and no appointment.

“I brought you one,” he said. “Don't mistake it for a bribe.”

“Then what are you asking?”

“Could we have ten minutes on the floor?”

She took the coffee and unlocked the studio. The social was next Saturday, eight days away; Henry had given himself a deadline long before he understood how hard it would be to approach Evelyn. Clare set the cups down and started the music at a low volume.

Henry walked toward her. He stopped in the same place as yesterday.

Clare turned off the music. She'd spent the morning trying to decide whether to call and ask about the dance card. Henry had brought it up himself by appearing at the door. She pulled out two chairs instead of making him start again immediately. He declined the chair, so she sat and waited until he took the other one.

“Tell me what happens there,” she said.

“My feet remember a different room.”

He opened his wallet. The dance card was already loose inside it.

“Riverside,” he said. “I was twenty-six and trying to look older. Margaret came over because I had spent half the night staring at the wallpaper. She said she wanted a partner, not another decoration.”

Clare looked at the repeated name. “She filled these in?”

“The first two. After that I kept asking.”

He touched a spot where the ink had faded almost entirely.

“Evelyn was her friend. They sang in the car on the way to every dance. I drove and complained that neither knew the words.”

“Does Evelyn know you plan to ask?”

“She knows I'm coming Saturday. She doesn't know why I've been wearing these ridiculous shoes around the house.”

“Is she someone you'd like to know better?”

Henry gave Clare a sharp look. “I already know her. We've been friends for decades. That's part of the problem.”

Clare let him explain at his own pace.

“If she were a stranger, I could ask and hear no. Evelyn knew Margaret. She knows how we were together.”

“And you think she'll judge you?”

“I'm afraid she won't.”

He put the card back in his wallet. Clare understood then: he was afraid of enjoying the dance, of letting it be good without feeling that something had been taken from his wife.

“She died three years ago,” Henry said. “Ethan came every day for a while. He brought lists. Things to eat, people to call, appointments to make. He meant well.”

“And you?”

“I had a list of things I couldn't bear to hear on the radio. Most were songs Margaret liked.”

He looked at the speaker. Clare left it off.

“We can practice the walk,” she said. “But I can't tell you what you must feel once you reach her.”

“Fair enough.”

They began without music. Clare stood near the opposite wall and waited. Henry crossed the room. This time he reached her, though he held out his hand a little too early.

“Better,” she said.

“I used to give students that look when their essays needed rewriting.”

“Then you know we have work to do.”

He laughed. They practiced twice more. On the last attempt he kept his eyes on hers, not the floor. It wasn't a promise about Saturday, but it was progress he had earned himself.

As they left, Clare's phone buzzed with an email from the center director. A shortfall in next season's budget meant every adult class would be reviewed after the social. Staff would receive details on Monday.

She read it again on the sidewalk. Her contract covered another month, and the class she was filling in for had been temporary to begin with. She had expected to lose these Tuesdays and Thursdays when her friend returned. Seeing all the adult classes under review felt different.

She thought of a beginner named Rosa who came after a long shift at the hospital and always apologized for her tired feet. And of the two brothers who brought their mother on Thursdays because she'd stopped going out after their father's death. A budget meeting would see a number beside each class. Clare knew their names.

She put the phone away before Henry noticed.

That evening Ethan appeared at the diner across from the center just as Clare and Henry were finishing supper. Henry had invited her after practice, promising the best pie in Richmond. The pie was good. His timing, she suspected, was deliberate.

“We ordered for you,” Henry told his son.

Ethan looked at the third plate. “You knew I was coming?”

“You said you'd pick me up at seven. It's seven.”

“You said you would be at the center.”

“I crossed the street.”

Ethan surveyed the pie, Clare, and his father's unapologetic face. Then he sat down.

“I told him about Evelyn,” Henry said before anyone could stop him.

“I heard part of it Thursday,” Ethan replied.

“She's bringing the photograph from the old ballroom. The one with your mother in blue.”

Ethan picked up his fork but didn't use it. “I haven't seen that picture in years.”

“Come Saturday. You can see it then.”

“I'll come.”

Henry studied him. “You have a meeting most Saturdays.”

“I'll move it.”

Clare watched Henry take that in. He seemed pleased, but also unwilling to trust a promise until it became a person in a chair.

Ethan's phone lit up. He silenced it without reading the message.

“It's fine if you need to answer,” Henry said.

“It's fine if it waits.”

Henry took a bite of pie. “We'll see how long that lasts.”

When Ethan stepped outside to pay the parking meter, Henry leaned across the table.

“I don't want him there because he thinks I'll fall.”

“Then tell him what you want.”

“He'll say he's coming for me.”

“You can ask him to stay for the music.”

Henry glanced through the window. Ethan stood in the drizzle, arguing with a parking app. He looked younger from a distance.

“Margaret used to get him onto the floor,” Henry said. “He hated that she could.”

“Maybe he didn't hate it.”

“He complained the whole way.”

“You do that too.”

Henry looked offended, then smiled.

Across the street the center's windows glowed above the sidewalk. Clare thought of the email she had hidden. Monday was close. She wanted Henry to have Saturday without another worry first, but she couldn't ignore what might happen to the class afterward.

She took out her phone and drafted a reply to the director:

I can bring attendance records and a proposal. When can we meet?

She sent it before she could talk herself out of it.