Part 1: The Girl on the Porch
The doorbell rang on a Sunday afternoon, right as I was elbow-deep in dishwater.
I nearly ignored it. Sundays usually meant a salesman. Solar panels. Gutter cleaning. Some young man with a clipboard eager to discuss the state of my eternal soul.
I wiped my hands on the dish towel and opened the door.
A young woman stood on our porch.
She looked to be in her mid-twenties. Her dark hair was tied back in a low ponytail, and a gray wool coat was buttoned right up to her chin. She held her hands together in front of her, one clamped around the other, the way people do when they’ve rehearsed a speech and forgotten every word of it.
“Can I help you?” I said.
She gave me a nervous smile.
“Hi, Margaret,” she said.
Something in her eyes stole my breath. They were big and brown, set just a little too far apart. Eyes that looked as if they were waiting to be told to leave.
“Do I know you?” I said.
“I hope so,” she said.
Then she smiled at me properly. A crooked smile, the left side climbing higher than the right. I had seen that smile ten thousand times, usually across a bowl of vegetables she refused to touch.
The dish towel slipped from my fingers.
“Ivy?” I whispered.
To understand why I couldn’t breathe on my own front porch, you need to know what Ivy was to me.
And to understand that, you need to know who I was before she came along.
I used to believe there was no problem in the world that music couldn’t make easier.
I grew up in a small Ohio town, the youngest of four girls. My mother played piano at our church. My father couldn’t have carried a tune in a bucket, yet every Saturday night he danced with her in the kitchen while the radio played. Big band. Glenn Miller. Benny Goodman. My sisters and I would perch on the stairs in our nightgowns and watch them through the doorway.
My mother used to say I was dancing before I could walk. She said I’d grip the edge of the coffee table and bounce up and down whenever she sat at the piano.
I had my first ballet lesson at five and my first jazz class at eight. By fourteen, I was riding a bus forty-five minutes each way, three times a week, to a real studio in Columbus.
At twenty-three, I was winning competitions. Regionals first, then nationals. Ballroom and contemporary. My partner was a lanky, sweet boy named Theo who could hoist me over his head as though I weighed nothing, and who couldn’t remember a single person’s birthday.
At thirty, I was a professional. I joined a touring company and spent six months of every year on the road. Theaters in Chicago, Atlanta, Denver. Once, for three glorious weeks, a stage in New York.
By thirty-two, it was over.
It happened during a rehearsal in Pittsburgh. A simple jump, one I’d done a thousand times. I landed wrong. My left knee went one way and the rest of me went the other.
I heard it before I felt it. A sound like a wet branch snapping.
Then I felt it.
Two surgeries followed, then a year of physical therapy. And a doctor in a white coat, perched on a rolling stool, studying my X-rays on a lighted board and shaking his head very gently.
“You’ll walk normally,” he said. “You’ll be able to dance at weddings. But Mrs. Burke, I’m sorry. You won’t perform again. Not like you did. The knee won’t take it.”
I went home and lay on the couch for three weeks.
I played no music. I never opened the curtains.
Every evening my husband, Daniel, came home from work, sat at the edge of the couch, and rested his hand on my ankle. The good one. He said very little. He isn’t a talker. He’s an accountant, and he likes numbers because they don’t argue with you.
At the end of the third week, he sat down on the coffee table across from me.
“You could teach,” he said.
“Teach what?” I said. “How to fall gracefully?”
“How to get back up,” he said.
I hated him for saying it.
Then I turned it over for a week.
Then I loved him for saying it.
So I opened a dance studio.
It was a narrow storefront on Main Street, squeezed between a shoe repair shop and a bakery that made the best cinnamon rolls in the county. The landlord gave me a good price because nobody else wanted the place. It used to be a pawn shop, and it still smelled faintly of old cigarettes and furniture polish.
Daniel and I installed the mirrors ourselves. We laid the wooden floor over one weekend, on our hands and knees, with help from our friends. We bolted the barres along the walls. I painted the sign out front myself. Burke Dance Studio. Blue letters, slightly crooked.
I had nine students my first month.
By the end of the first year, sixty.
By year five, more than two hundred. Little girls in pink tights. Teenagers who wanted hip-hop. Middle-aged women who had always wanted to try tap. And a seventy-eight-year-old retired mailman named Gus, who took ballroom every Tuesday because his late wife had always wanted him to and he’d never gotten around to it.
For years, I loved every single minute.
But dancing wasn’t my only love.
I had always adored children. Always, since I was a little girl myself. I was the one who babysat for every family on our street, the one who held the babies at church while their mothers sang in the choir.
All my life I’d dreamed of having one of my own.
Daniel and I started trying when I was thirty-three, a year after the knee. We assumed it would be easy. Everyone in my family got pregnant easily. My sister Carol conceived on her honeymoon.
It wasn’t easy.
First one year, then two. Then doctors. Then tests. Then shots in my stomach every morning that left small bruises like purple fingerprints. Then a procedure. Then another.
Then a doctor across from us in a cramped office, a box of tissues on the table.
I won’t tell you all of what those years held. Some things belong to Daniel and me alone.
But by the time I turned thirty-nine, we had stopped talking about it. Not because we’d given up. Because talking about it hurt too much.
We walked past the baby aisle at the grocery store without looking. We went to baby showers, smiled, brought gifts, and then rode home in silence.
Upstairs, across the hall from our own, was a little bedroom. We’d painted it pale yellow the year we moved in. A nursery, someday.
By the time I was thirty-nine, that door stayed shut.
Then one October evening, Daniel took my hand at the kitchen table.
We had just finished dinner. Pot roast. The dishes were still sitting out. The radio murmured low, because there was always music playing in our house.
“What if we became foster parents?” he said.
I stared at him.
“After everything we’ve been through?” I said. “Daniel, I can’t. I can’t love a child and then have to give it back. I can’t do that.”
He tightened his grip on my hand.
“We still have a home, Maggie,” he said. “And we still have love to give. All that love. It’s just sitting there. In that yellow room. Behind that closed door.”
I said nothing for a long while.
On the radio, an old Glenn Miller song was playing. Moonlight Serenade. My parents’ song, the one they used to dance to in the kitchen on Saturday nights.
“Okay,” I said at last. “Okay. Let’s find out.”
The classes ran eight weeks. Every Tuesday and Thursday night, in a church basement across town, alongside eleven other couples and a woman named Joanne Pruitt from the county, who wore enormous glasses and talked very fast.
She told us about trauma. About attachment. About how children who’ve been shuffled around might behave in a new home. They hide food. They refuse to unpack. They test you, to see whether you’ll send them away.
“These children have learned that grown-ups leave,” Joanne said. “Your job is to not leave. Even when they push you. Especially when they push you.”
On the final night she told us one more thing, looking straight at me as she said it.
“And you have to remember,” she said, “that the goal of foster care is reunification. With family, if possible. You might love a child with your whole heart, and still have to let them go. If you can’t accept that, this isn’t for you.”
I nodded.
I believed I accepted it.
I knew nothing.
Three months later, on a cold Tuesday afternoon in February, a little girl arrived at our door.
Joanne Pruitt brought her. The two of them stood on our porch in the gray afternoon light.
Ivy was eight years old.
She was small for eight, and thin. Her dark hair was cropped short and uneven, as if someone had gone at it with kitchen scissors. She wore a pink coat two sizes too big, its sleeves rolled up three times.
In her hands she carried a blue duffel bag with a broken zipper, and a plastic Kroger bag stuffed with clothes.
That was everything she owned.
I knelt on the porch so we’d be eye to eye.
“Hello, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m Margaret.”
She looked at me. She didn’t smile.
“Hello,” she said.
Her voice was very quiet. Very polite.
“This is Daniel,” I said. Daniel was standing behind me in the doorway. He gave her a small wave, like a man afraid of startling a bird.
Ivy looked at him. She didn’t wave back.
“Would you like to see your room?” I asked.
She nodded.
We took her upstairs to the yellow room.
We had opened that door for the first time in years. We’d cleaned the room and bought a white bed with a purple quilt, a little desk, and a lamp shaped like a moon. I’d set a stuffed rabbit on the pillow. Daniel had left a box of crayons and a pad of drawing paper on the desk.
Ivy stood in the doorway and gazed at it for a long time.
She didn’t step inside.
“Am I allowed to sleep in that bed?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “It’s yours.”
She looked up at me.
“For how long?” she asked.
I glanced at Daniel. Daniel glanced at me.
What do you say to that? To an eight-year-old who needs to know how long she gets before she’ll even set foot in her own bedroom?
“For as long as you’re here, honey,” I said.
Ivy nodded slowly, as though that was the answer she’d expected.
She walked in. She set the blue duffel bag on the floor beside the bed and put the grocery bag next to it.
She didn’t unpack.
Those first weeks, Ivy asked permission for everything.
Everything.
“Can I open the refrigerator?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
“Can I sit on the couch?”
“Absolutely.”
“Can I use the bathroom?”
“You never have to ask that, honey. Never.”
“Can I have a glass of water?”
“Ivy, you can have whatever you want. This is your house now.”
When I said things like that, she’d give me a long, careful look, as if she were hunting for the trick.
She cleaned her plate at every meal. Every last bite, even the things I could tell she disliked. She ate fast, one arm curled around the plate, like someone expecting it to be taken away.
One night, Daniel found a dinner roll under her pillow. A granola bar in her sock drawer. Three packets of crackers in the pocket of her pink coat.
He came into our bedroom with them cupped in his hands. He said nothing. He just laid them on the bed.
I sat looking at those crackers for a long time.
Joanne had warned us about this. Hiding food. Children who don’t know whether there will be food tomorrow.
Hearing it in a church basement was different.
The next morning I set a basket on the kitchen counter and filled it with granola bars, crackers, apples, and little bags of pretzels.
“This is your basket,” I told Ivy. “Anything in it is yours. Whenever you want. You don’t have to ask. And when it gets empty, I’ll fill it up again. Every time.”
She studied the basket for a long while.
She took nothing that day.
But the following morning, two granola bars were gone.
The morning after, three.
A week later, Daniel stopped finding food under her pillow.
One evening, about a month after she arrived, she was carrying her glass of milk to the table when it slid out of her hands.
It hit the kitchen floor. It didn’t break. It simply tipped, and milk spread everywhere. Across the tiles. Under the table.
Ivy froze.
Then she dropped to her knees.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
She was clawing at the milk with her bare hands, trying to wipe it up, only pushing it around. Her whole body trembled.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry…”
“Ivy,” I said. “Sweetheart. Stop.”
“I didn’t mean to!”
I knelt beside her, right in the milk, and covered her hands with mine.
“I know you didn’t,” I said. “It’s just milk. That’s all it is.”
She looked up at me. Her eyes were huge. Terrified.
“Are you mad?” she whispered.
“Not even a little,” I said.
She stared at me.
She stared in total disbelief, as if I’d just told her the sky was green.
Daniel came over with a roll of paper towels and sat down on the floor too. All three of us, in a puddle of milk on the kitchen floor.
“You know what I did once?” Daniel said to her. “When I was about your age? I knocked over a whole gallon of milk. A whole gallon. In my grandmother’s kitchen. It went everywhere. It went under the stove. Her kitchen smelled like sour milk for a month.”
Ivy looked at him.
“Was she mad?”
“She was a little mad,” Daniel admitted. “But then she made me a grilled cheese sandwich. Because she said a boy who spills that much milk must be very hungry.”
Ivy watched him for a long time.
Then, very slowly, the left side of her mouth rose.
Just a little.
It was the first time I ever saw her crooked smile.
But every night, she packed her clothes back into her duffel bag.
Every single night.
When I went up to tuck her in, there it would be. Her clothes folded neatly and zipped into the blue bag with the broken zipper, sitting on the floor beside her bed. Her shoes lined up next to it. Ready.
In the morning she’d pull out what she needed for the day. At night she’d put it all back.
“Sweetheart,” I said once. “You can put your clothes in the dresser. That’s what it’s for.”
“I know,” she said.
She didn’t put them in the dresser.
I never asked again. Joanne had been clear. Don’t push. Let her decide when.
It took almost three months.
But gradually, Ivy began to feel at home.
It happened in tiny ways, so small you could almost miss them.
One morning I came downstairs and found her already in the kitchen, standing at the open refrigerator, searching for the orange juice. She hadn’t asked.
One afternoon she came home from school, dropped her backpack by the front door, kicked off her shoes, and flopped onto the couch with a huge sigh. Like any eight-year-old in America.
“Margaret,” she called from the living room one Saturday. “Where are my crayons?”
“Under the couch, sweetheart,” I called back from the kitchen. “Where you left them.”
“And my shoes?”
“Also where you left them.”
“Where’s that?”
“Wherever you took them off.”
I heard her groan.
Daniel was beside me at the counter, making coffee.
He was grinning.
“She finally knows this is her home,” he said quietly.
That night, when I went up to tuck her in, the blue duffel bag was in her closet. On the floor. Empty.
Her clothes were in the dresser drawers. Not folded well. Mostly shoved in. A sock dangled from the top drawer.
I stood in the doorway staring at that sock for a long time.
Afterward I had to go sit on the back steps for a while before I could speak to anyone.
A few weeks later, Ivy stomped upstairs because Daniel wouldn’t let her stay up for the TV.
A cartoon movie was playing and she wanted to see the ending. It was eight-thirty. Bedtime was eight.
“That’s so unfair!” she shouted from halfway up the stairs. “You’re the worst!”
“Good night, Ivy!” Daniel called after her cheerfully.
“I hate this house!”
She slammed her bedroom door so hard the pictures in the hallway rattled.
Daniel turned around on the couch and looked at me.
He was grinning from ear to ear.
“She’s finally being annoying,” he said.
I burst out laughing.
I laughed so hard I had to grip the back of the couch. I laughed until tears streamed down my face. Daniel laughed too.
Upstairs, Ivy’s door opened a crack.
“What’s so funny?” she yelled down.
That only made us laugh harder.
But everything truly changed one evening in our kitchen.
It was a Thursday in May. Warm. The windows were open, and the scent of lilacs drifted in from the bush in the backyard.
I was making dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs. The radio was on, as always, and an old song began to play. Moonlight Serenade. Glenn Miller. My parents’ song.
I couldn’t help myself. I never can when that song comes on.
I started to dance. Just a little. Swaying at the stove, stirring the sauce. A small turn on my good knee. A little step.
Then I noticed Ivy.
She stood in the kitchen doorway, watching me, a crayon in her hand.
“Want to try?” I said.
She shook her head fast.
“I can’t dance.”
“Neither can Daniel,” I said.
From the living room, Daniel shouted, “Hey!”
Ivy almost smiled.
I turned down the burner under the sauce and wiped my hands on my apron. Then I held out my hand to her.
“Come on,” I said. “Just one step.”
She looked at my hand.
“What if I do it wrong?” she said.
“Then we’ll invent a new dance,” I said. “Nobody owns dancing, sweetheart. You can’t do it wrong. You can only do it your way.”
She hesitated for a long time.
Then she set her crayon on the counter, crossed the kitchen, and took my hand.
Her hand was small and a little sticky.
“Okay,” I said. “Put your other hand here. On my shoulder. That’s it. Now just step to the side with me. Like this.”
She stepped sideways, a little stiff.
“Like this?”
“Perfect,” I said. “Now step back.”
She stepped back.
“Now we’re going to turn,” I said.
Her eyes went wide.
“I’ll fall!”
“I’ve got you,” I said.
I raised my arm. She ducked under it and spun around, once. Too fast. Her feet tangled.
She stumbled straight into my arms.
And she laughed.
A real laugh. Big, loud, startled. Like a hiccup. Like something that had been lodged inside her for a long time and had finally popped free.
I had never heard her laugh like that.
In the living room doorway, Daniel stood watching us, one hand pressed over his heart.
From then on, dancing became our evening ritual.
Every night after dinner and the dishes, Ivy would wander into the kitchen and lean against the counter.
“Music time?” she’d ask.
“Only if you’ve finished your homework,” I’d say.
“That’s blackmail!”
“That’s parenting,” I’d say.
She’d stomp off to finish. Ten minutes later she’d be back, waving her worksheet in the air.
“Done! Now music time?”
Soon she was dancing around the kitchen every single night.
I taught her the box step. The basic waltz. A little swing. How to point her toes. How to spot when she turned, so she wouldn’t get dizzy. How to hold her arms so they looked like wings.
She was good. Really good. She had a natural sense of rhythm and listened to music with her whole body.
“Margaret,” she said one night. “Can I come to your studio sometime? And take a real class?”
“Ivy,” I said. “You can come every single day if you want.”
She came Tuesdays and Saturdays. She stood in the back row of my beginners’ class in a pair of pink tights I’d bought her, watching the other girls and copying every move. Three weeks later, she was in the front row.
One night in late June, we were sitting on the kitchen floor after dancing. Out of breath. Leaning against the cabinets. Eating popsicles. Grape for her, cherry for me.
We’d watched a movie together earlier that evening. A silly one about a girl who finds a magic coin that grants wishes.
“Margaret,” Ivy said. “Can we make a list? Like the girl in the movie? Of wishes?”
“A wish list?”
“A dream list,” Ivy said. “Things we want to do someday.”
“Of course we can,” I said. “Everybody should have something to dream about.”
I took a sheet of paper from the junk drawer. She fetched her crayons. We sat at the kitchen table, and she wrote it out very carefully, her tongue poking from the corner of her mouth.
At the top, in big letters, she wrote:
OUR DREAM LIST.
And underneath:
Get a puppy.
Eat ice cream for breakfast.
Learn to do five spins without falling.
Go to the ocean.
See Margaret dance on a real stage.
Daniel learns to dance. (Probably impossible.)
Daniel read that last one over her shoulder and pretended to be deeply offended.
Then she stopped.
She hovered the crayon over the paper. Not writing.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I said.
“How do you spell nobody?” she said.
“N-O-B-O-D-Y.”
She wrote it very slowly. Then she kept going.
Before I could read the last line, she folded the paper over and laid her arm across it.
“That one’s a secret,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s fair. Everybody’s allowed a secret.”
She kept that list on her bedside table, under her moon-shaped lamp.
Sometimes, when I came in to tuck her in, I’d find her reading it.
One evening, after our dancing, she asked me something that stayed with me for the rest of my life.
We were in the kitchen. The music had stopped. She stood in front of me, still holding my hands, a little out of breath.
“Margaret,” she said. “Can families stay together forever?”
I looked down at her.
“Sometimes they can, sweetheart,” I said.
“Can we?” she said.
I pulled her against me and held her tight.
I didn’t know what to say. I remembered what Joanne had told us. The goal of foster care is reunification. We weren’t supposed to make promises.
But I held her, and I felt her heart beating against my stomach, and I couldn’t make myself say the true thing.
“I hope so,” I said into her hair.
Unfortunately, hope wasn’t enough.
Eleven months after Ivy came to live with us, our caseworker called.
It was a Wednesday morning in January. I was at the studio, in my office, eating a cinnamon roll from the bakery next door and working on the schedule for the spring recital.
Joanne Pruitt’s name lit up my phone.
“Margaret,” she said. “We’ve located Ivy’s relatives.”
I put down the cinnamon roll.
“What does that mean?”
“Her mother’s sister,” Joanne said. “Rhonda. She lives in Indiana. Near Fort Wayne. She didn’t know Ivy was in care until a few months ago. She’s been going through the approval process since October.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“And?”
“And she’s been approved,” Joanne said. “She wants to take her. Family placement.”
