Part 3: The Last Line on the List
“I haven’t seen that,” I whispered, “in years.”
I couldn’t move. I just sat there staring at it.
Ivy set the box on the kitchen table in front of me, very carefully, with both hands.
“I took it,” she said quietly. “The night before I left.”
I stared at her.
“How?” I said. “Ivy, how? Where did you…”
“It was on the shelf,” she said. “In the hallway. Right outside my room. I walked past it every night. I’d seen you take it down once and open it and show me what was inside.”
She sat back down and wrapped her hands around her coffee mug.
“The night before I left,” she said, “after you tucked me in, I waited until I heard you and Daniel go to sleep. Then I got out of bed and went into the hallway and took it off the shelf. And I put it in my duffel bag. At the very bottom. Under all my clothes. I was so scared you’d find it before I left. I didn’t sleep all night.”
Daniel leaned across the table.
“You took it?” he said. “Ivy. Why?”
Ivy looked down at the box.
“Because I thought,” she said slowly, “that if I kept something important from this house… I’d always have a reason to come back.”
Her voice began to tremble.
“I was eight,” she said. “I thought it was a good plan. I thought, if I have Margaret’s special box, then someday I’ll have to bring it back. And then I’ll get to come back here. To this house. To this kitchen.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Then I got older,” she said. “And I realized what I’d actually done. I’d stolen it. From the only people who ever…”
She stopped.
“I was so ashamed,” she said. “I was so ashamed, Margaret.”
“Oh, Ivy,” I said.
“I kept promising myself I’d return it,” she said. “Every year. Every birthday. Every time we moved. I kept it with me. In every apartment. In every town. It was always the first thing I unpacked. And every year I’d say, This is the year I’ll find them. This is the year I’ll bring it back.”
She slid the box across the table toward me.
“I think it belongs to you,” she said.
I looked at the box.
I laid my hands on it. The wood was smooth and warm, as if she’d been holding it for a very long time.
Slowly, I lifted the brass latch.
I opened the lid.
And suddenly, I remembered everything that happened after she left.
All of it. All at once.
Dozens of medals lay inside.
Gold. Silver. Bronze.
Some on ribbons. Some on little chains. Some loose, rattling in the bottom of the box. My very first little bronze medal, from when I was nine, from the regional tap competition in Dayton. The ribbon had faded from red to pink.
Awards from competitions I’d nearly forgotten. Columbus. Cleveland. Indianapolis. Atlanta. Las Vegas.
“Oh, my goodness,” I whispered.
I lifted a gold medal from the very top.
It was heavier than the rest, hung on a wide blue ribbon. Engraved on the back: National Ballroom Championship. First Place. Margaret Ellen Burke.
“Daniel,” I said. “Look.”
He came around the table and stood behind me, one hand on my shoulder.
He smiled. A sad smile.
“Your first national championship,” he said. “Las Vegas. The red dress.”
“I can’t believe you remember the dress.”
“I remember everything about that night,” he said. “That was the night I knew I was going to marry you.”
Ivy nodded.
“I used to watch you polish those,” she said. “Remember? On Sunday afternoons. You’d take the box down and sit at this table with a rag and some silver polish and polish every single one.”
I looked at her.
“You remember that?”
“You told me every medal had a story,” she said.
I laughed through my tears.
“And you asked me,” I said, “whether the bronze ones meant I was terrible.”
“You said they meant you’d been brave enough to compete,” Ivy said. “You said the gold ones were for being the best that day. But the bronze ones were for being brave enough to try in the first place. And brave was more important.”
She touched one of the bronze medals in the box.
“I thought about that a lot,” she said. “Growing up.”
I looked at her across the table.
“But why take these, sweetheart?” I said. “You could have taken anything. Why my medals?”
“Because they mattered to you,” she said.
“But why not take something of yours? Something of your own? To remember us by?”
Ivy looked down at the box and ran her finger along its edge.
“Because I thought,” she said slowly, “that if I took something you really loved, then maybe you’d come looking for me.”
The kitchen went very quiet.
“I never imagined you’d taken it,” I whispered.
“I thought you’d notice right away,” Ivy said. “I thought you’d go to the shelf the next day and see it was gone and know it was me. And then you’d call. Or come to Indiana. Or write to me.” She swallowed. “I used to wait by the mailbox. Every day after school. For a whole year. Waiting for a letter from you that said, Ivy, where’s my box?”
“Ivy,” I said. “After you left, I could barely look at anything that reminded me of dancing. I didn’t open that cabinet. I didn’t go down that hallway. I didn’t even notice the box was gone for three years.”
She lowered her eyes.
“And when you didn’t come,” she said quietly, “I thought maybe you didn’t care about the box. Or me. And I promised myself that when I grew up, I’d find you. I’d bring it back myself.”
“But why wait eighteen years?” I said. “Sweetheart. Why so long?”
She looked down at her coffee.
“When I was little, my aunt wouldn’t let me contact you,” she said. “She said it would confuse me. That I had to let go of the old family and focus on the real one. She took your letters. I found them years later, when she was moving to Arizona. In a shoebox in her closet. Six of them. She’d never even opened them.”
I pressed my hand to my mouth.
“And then we moved,” Ivy said. “So many times. I lost your address. I was twelve. I didn’t know how to find people. I didn’t even remember the name of your street. Just the yellow room. And the kitchen.”
“But you could have found us when you got older,” Daniel said gently. “When you were grown.”
Ivy nodded slowly.
“I know,” she said. “I did. I found your address almost a year ago.”
“A year?” I said.
She nodded.
“I found it on the internet. Property records. I drove here. Eleven months ago. I parked across the street. I sat in my car for two hours. I saw Daniel come out to get the mail. I saw you through the kitchen window, Margaret. Washing dishes. Just like today.”
She wiped her eyes.
“And I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I couldn’t get out of the car. I drove home. I came back four more times. I never got out of the car.”
“Why not?” I whispered.
“Because I was afraid you’d forgotten me,” she said. “Or that you’d be angry. That you’d never forgive me. For taking the medals.”
“So what changed?” I said. “Why today?”
She was quiet for a long moment.
“Last Sunday,” she said, “I was sitting in my car across the street again. For the sixth time. And I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. And I realized I was still that scared little girl. Sitting on the floor next to a duffel bag. Waiting for somebody else to come and make the first move.”
She looked up at me.
“And I didn’t want to be her anymore,” she said.
“Ivy,” I said. “We never stopped thinking about you. Not once. Not one single day.”
Daniel reached across the table and laid his big hand over both of ours.
“Not once,” he said.
She wiped her eyes.
“I thought about you both too,” she said. “All the time. Especially when things got hard.”
I thought I understood now. I thought she had come to return something from our past. To say she was sorry. To close the circle.
But I was starting to suspect she had something else in mind.
The way she kept staring at the box. The way she kept glancing at me, like she was working up to something.
“Were things hard?” I asked carefully. “Growing up?”
“Sometimes,” Ivy said. “My aunt tried. But we moved around so much. Eleven schools. I counted once. Eleven schools in ten years. I never stayed anywhere long enough to have a best friend.”
I squeezed her hand.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “You gave me something. Something that stayed with me. Through all of it.”
She reached into the box and picked up the little bronze medal. The one from when I was nine, with the faded ribbon.
“Every new school,” she said, “every new town, every time I felt like I couldn’t do something. Like I’d fall. I’d remember what you said about the bronze ones. About being brave enough to try.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“Did you keep dancing?” I asked.
She laughed. The hiccup laugh.
“Actually,” she said, “I became a dance instructor.”
I nearly dropped the gold medal.
“You did?”
She nodded, smiling now. That crooked smile.
“In every town we moved to, the first thing I’d do was find the cheapest dance class,” she said. “Rec centers. YMCAs. Church basements. Wherever I could go for free, or almost free. And I’d stand in the back row and copy everything.” She shrugged. “Just like I did in your studio.”
“And now?”
“And now I teach,” she said. “Contemporary and ballroom. And a little jazz.”
She took a breath.
“And I opened my own studio,” she said. “Last year. A little one. In Columbus.”
Daniel slapped his hand on the kitchen table so hard the coffee cups jumped.
“Would you look at that!” he said. “Would you look at that! Maggie! Did you hear that?”
I couldn’t stop staring at her.
“You became a teacher?” I said.
“Just like you,” Ivy said.
I thought that was Ivy’s biggest surprise.
But she had something even bigger planned.
She reached into the wooden box again, beneath the medals, all the way to the bottom.
“Actually,” she said, “there’s something else I need to show you.”
She drew out a folded piece of paper.
It was old. Soft as fabric. Folded so many times the creases had nearly worn through. It had been taped back together in two places.
She unfolded it carefully on the table.
Childish handwriting covered both sides. In crayon. Purple and green and orange.
“Do you remember this?” she said.
I looked down at it.
At the top, in big purple crayon letters, it said:
OUR DREAM LIST.
I laughed softly, my hand drifting to my mouth.
“We made this after watching that movie,” I said. “The one about the girl with the magic coin. We sat right here. At this table.”
“You said everyone should have something to dream about,” Ivy said.
I began to read.
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 one over my shoulder and let out an outraged noise.
Ivy laughed.
Then I reached the very last line.
The secret one. The one she’d folded over and shielded with her arm, eighteen years ago, so I couldn’t see it.
It was written in green crayon. Very carefully. You could see where she’d pressed so hard the crayon had almost torn the paper.
When I grow up, I’ll buy us a house where nobody has to leave.
My vision blurred.
I couldn’t read the words anymore.
“You wrote this?” I whispered.
“You helped me spell nobody,” Ivy said.
I remembered.
I remembered that night. Sitting on the kitchen floor eating popsicles. Grape for her, cherry for me. Ivy asking How do you spell nobody? With the crayon held over the paper. Her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.
I’d spelled it for her. N-O-B-O-D-Y.
And I’d never known what she was using it for.
“You really kept this?” I said. “All these years?”
“Of course,” Ivy said. “Through eleven schools.”
She drew a deep breath.
“Margaret,” she said. “My studio was supposed to be that house.”
I looked up at her.
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“I wanted to make somewhere,” she said, “where kids could walk in and not feel like visitors. Where nobody would ask them how long they’re staying. Where they wouldn’t have to pack their stuff back into a duffel bag every night. Somewhere they could just… belong.”
“Do you teach foster children?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Most of them come at a discount,” she said. “Some of them come for free. I work with the county. The caseworkers send them to me.”
“Just like you once needed someone to help you,” I said.
She nodded again.
“Some of them barely speak when they first come in,” she said. “They stand in the back row. They don’t take off their coats. They ask permission for everything. Can I use the bathroom? Can I sit down? Can I have some water?”
She looked at me.
“Like you,” I whispered.
“Like me,” Ivy said.
Then her face changed.
She looked down at the table.
“But I’m struggling, Margaret,” she said quietly.
“With what?”
“Rent,” she said. “Insurance. Equipment. The mirrors are falling off the walls. The sound system is from 2004. One of the windows doesn’t close.” She shook her head. “The discounted classes don’t cover their own costs. Not even close. I’ve been paying for it out of my own savings. And my savings are gone. I’m three months behind on rent.”
I instantly reached for my purse, hanging on the back of my chair.
“How much do you need?” I said.
“Margaret, no.”
“Let me help,” I said. “Please. Let me help. Whatever it is.”
“I didn’t come for money,” Ivy said.
“Then what?” I said. “What do you need, sweetheart?”
She took a deep breath.
She looked at me across the old oak table, with her big brown eyes. The ones that used to look like they were waiting to be told to leave.
They didn’t look like that anymore.
“I came for you,” she said.
I froze.
“Me?”
“I need a partner,” Ivy said. “Someone who knows how to teach. Someone who knows how to build a studio from nothing. How to run it. How to keep it alive.” She swallowed. “Someone who knows how to make a scared kid take one step.”
I stared at her.
“Ivy,” I said. “I haven’t taught in eighteen years. I haven’t danced in fifteen. I don’t even play music in this house anymore. What if I can’t do it?”
“What if you fall?” Ivy said softly.
I looked at her.
“You taught me to dance,” she said, “when I was too afraid to take one single step. Remember? Right there.”
She pointed at the floor. At the space between the stove and the counter.
“Right there,” she said. “You held out your hand. And I said, What if I do it wrong? And you said, Then we’ll invent a new dance.”
I couldn’t speak.
“There’s already a room for you,” Ivy added quietly. “At the studio. An office. With a window. I painted it.”
“You prepared a room for me?” I said.
“I hoped you’d say yes,” she said.
She paused.
“I painted it yellow,” she said.
Daniel was looking at me. I could feel his eyes on me.
I didn’t look back at him. I couldn’t.
“Perhaps,” Daniel said very gently, “you should go see it, Maggie.”
I looked down at the medals in the wooden box.
The gold one from Las Vegas. The bronze one from when I was nine. Twenty-six years of being brave enough to try.
Then I looked at Ivy.
“I’m not promising anything,” I said.
“That’s okay,” she said quickly.
“But I’d like to visit,” I said. “Tomorrow.”
Her whole face lit up.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said.
She stayed for dinner. I made spaghetti and meatballs. I didn’t even think about it. It just happened.
She ate two helpings. She complained that the green beans were overcooked. Daniel said some things never change.
When she left at nine o’clock, she hugged us both on the porch. She held on to me for a long time.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Ten o’clock. I’ll text you the address.”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
I stood on the porch and watched her taillights roll down our street and turn the corner.
Just like eighteen years ago.
Except this time, she was coming back.
After Ivy left, Daniel and I sat at the kitchen table. The wooden box still sat between us, the dream list unfolded beside it.
Daniel took my hand.
“You know,” he said quietly. “I lost her too.”
“I know,” I said.
“I know you think it was just you,” he said. “I know you think I didn’t feel it the same way. Because I didn’t stop going to work. Because I didn’t close anything.” He shook his head. “I used to sit in the car in the parking lot of my office for twenty minutes every morning before I could go in. For two years. I never told you.”
I looked at him.
“Daniel…”
“And then,” he said, “I watched you lose the thing you loved most in the world. After her. I watched you close the studio. Put the photographs in the attic. Turn off the radio. And I didn’t know how to stop it.” His voice cracked. “I lost her. And then I watched you lose yourself. And I couldn’t do anything about either one.”
I looked down at our hands on the table.
“I don’t know if I can be that woman again,” I said. “The one with the studio. The one in the red dress in Las Vegas. I don’t know if she’s still in here.”
Daniel squeezed my hand.
“You don’t have to be her,” he said. “You don’t have to be anybody but who you are right now.”
He leaned across the table and kissed my forehead.
“Just don’t let fear take another eighteen years from you, Maggie,” he said. “It’s taken enough.”
That night, before bed, I did something I hadn’t done in fifteen years.
I went to the kitchen cabinet and dug through the old CDs at the back. Behind the cookbooks. Behind the extra coffee filters.
I found it. The Glenn Miller one.
I put it in the old CD player on the counter and pressed play.
Moonlight Serenade.
Daniel wandered into the kitchen in his pajamas and stood in the doorway.
He said nothing.
He just held out his hand.
He’s a terrible dancer, Daniel. He always has been. He has no rhythm at all. He steps on my feet. He counts out loud under his breath.
We danced in the kitchen anyway. Slowly. Back and forth.
And for the first time in eighteen years, there was music in our house.
