Epilogue: The Open Door
The next morning, I drove to Columbus.
Ivy’s studio sat on the second floor of an old brick building on the east side of the city, above a laundromat. You had to climb a narrow staircase that smelled of fabric softener.
A sign hung on the door at the top of the stairs. Hand-painted. Slightly crooked.
The Open Door Dance Studio.
I stood in front of that sign for a long time.
Inside was one big room. The wooden floor was scratched and warped in places. The mirrors were old, with dark spots in the corners where the silver was peeling. One was held to the wall with duct tape. The windows rattled whenever a truck passed outside. The sound system was an old boom box perched on a folding chair.
But children were laughing.
About fifteen of them. Seven, eight, nine years old. Racing around the room in their socks. Sliding across the floor. Spinning in circles until they dropped. Laughing so loudly I could hear them from the stairs.
Ivy spotted me in the doorway and waved. She was on the phone. She held up one finger. One minute.
While she gathered her paperwork, I looked around the room.
And I noticed a little girl.
She stood alone in the back corner, by the window, apart from all the others. She was about eight years old. Small. Thin. She wore a big puffy purple coat zipped all the way up, though the room was warm.
She wasn’t taking it off.
She just stood there watching the other kids, her back against the wall.
I knew that look.
I’d seen it on my front porch eighteen years ago.
I crossed the room to her, slowly, and knelt on my good knee so we’d be eye to eye.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Margaret. What’s your name?”
She looked at me for a long time.
“Destiny,” she said. Very quietly.
“That’s a beautiful name,” I said. “Do you want to dance, Destiny?”
She shook her head fast.
“I’m bad at it,” she said.
“Who told you that?”
She shrugged and looked at the floor.
“Then let’s try one step,” I said. “Just one. That’s all.”
She looked up at me with big, careful eyes.
“What if I fall?” she said.
I didn’t freeze this time.
I didn’t have to go sit on the floor of an office with my back against the door.
I simply held out my hand.
“Then I’ll help you get up,” I said.
She stared at my hand for a long time.
Then, very slowly, she unzipped her purple coat, took it off, and laid it carefully on the floor by the window.
And she took my hand.
“Like this?” she said, stepping to the side.
“Perfect,” I said. “Now step back.”
She stepped back.
“Now we’re going to turn,” I said.
She went under my arm and spun around, once. Too fast. Her feet tangled.
She stumbled.
I caught her.
And she laughed.
Soon we were both laughing.
After class, Ivy came over. The kids were pulling on their coats and shoes. Destiny’s foster mother had arrived to pick her up. Destiny had waved to me from the door. A small wave. Like a bird.
Ivy stood beside me and looked at me for a long moment.
“You looked happy,” she said.
“I was,” I said.
I meant it. I hadn’t felt like that in eighteen years. My knee ached. My back ached. I was out of breath.
I felt alive.
“And,” I said, “I have a plan.”
Ivy raised her eyebrows.
“We?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “We. I’m going to organize a charity performance. A big one. We’ll invite everybody. The whole city. We’ll raise enough money to fix those mirrors and that window and get you a real sound system and pay your rent.”
I took a breath.
“But I’m not doing it as a guest,” I said. “I’m doing it as your partner. If you’ll still have me.”
Ivy threw her arms around my neck.
“Deal!” she said.
It took three weeks.
I hadn’t organized anything in eighteen years. But it came back faster than I expected. Like riding a bicycle. Like dancing.
I called every single person I’d ever known. Former students from my old studio. Some were in their thirties now, with children of their own. They came. Kayla, my old instructor, drove up from Cincinnati. Gus, the retired mailman, was ninety-six now and living in a nursing home. He sent a check for fifty dollars and a note that said For the foxtrot.
Daniel handled the accounting. He sold tickets. He built a set. A painted backdrop of a kitchen, with a window and a stove and an old oak table.
A local church lent us its auditorium. The bakery next door to my old studio, the one with the cinnamon rolls, donated three hundred of them for intermission. The newspaper ran a story.
Former Dance Champion Returns to Help Foster Children Find Their Feet.
On the night of the performance, the auditorium was packed. Four hundred people. Standing room only at the back.
Ivy’s students danced first. All fifteen of them, in matching purple T-shirts Daniel had ordered online. They performed a simple routine Ivy and I had choreographed together. It wasn’t perfect. Two of them went the wrong way. One stopped in the middle to wave at her mom.
Destiny was in the front row.
She didn’t fall once.
At the very end, the lights went down.
A single spotlight came on at center stage. On the painted kitchen. On the old oak table.
And the music began.
Moonlight Serenade.
Ivy walked onto the stage from one side. I walked out from the other. A brace was strapped around my knee beneath my dress. A red one. I’d bought it for the occasion.
We met in the middle of the painted kitchen.
And we danced.
Not a competition dance. Nothing for medals. Just the box step. The basic waltz. A little swing. The same steps I’d taught her on the kitchen floor eighteen years before.
When we reached the turn, she raised her arm, and I went under it. And I spun around. Once.
And she caught me.
The auditorium fell completely silent.
Then four hundred people rose to their feet.
That night, our charity performance raised enough to cover three months of rent. And new mirrors. And a window that closed. And a sound system from this century.
Afterward, backstage, Ivy hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“You saved my studio,” she whispered.
“We saved it,” I said. “Together.”
The following Tuesday, we taught our first class together.
Ivy took the left side of the room. I took the right. Fifteen kids in purple T-shirts between us.
My knee hurt by the end. My back hurt. I had to sit down twice.
But I didn’t stop.
Afterward, Daniel was waiting by the door. He’d come to pick me up. He’d been standing at the back of the room, watching the whole class.
He hugged me in the doorway.
“There’s my girl,” he said into my hair.
Then, from across the room, I heard music.
Ivy had switched on the new sound system. She’d found a song. An old song.
Moonlight Serenade.
I turned around.
“You remembered,” I said.
Ivy smiled her crooked smile.
“I promised,” she said.
The kids had all gone home. It was just the three of us. Ivy and Daniel and me. In the empty studio. With the new mirrors on the walls and the old wooden floor and the window that finally closed.
I crossed the floor toward her.
I held out my hand.
“May I have this dance?” I said.
Ivy looked at my hand.
She smiled.
“This time,” she said, “neither of us has to leave.”
She took my hand.
We danced across that scratched wooden floor while Daniel stood in the doorway, his hand over his heart. The same way he’d stood in our kitchen doorway, eighteen years ago, the very first time.
Later that night, at home, I found the dream list on the kitchen table. Ivy had left it there. She said she wanted it to stay in the house where it was written.
I unfolded it very carefully. The soft old paper. The purple and green crayon.
I took a pen from the junk drawer.
Next to Learn to do five spins without falling, I made a check mark. Ivy had done six that afternoon, to show the kids.
Next to See Margaret dance on a real stage, I made another check mark.
Next to Daniel learns to dance (Probably impossible), I wrote, Still working on it.
Then I looked at the last line.
When I grow up, I’ll buy us a house where nobody has to leave.
She hadn’t bought a house. She’d rented a second floor above a laundromat, with mirrors held up by duct tape and windows that rattled whenever trucks went by.
But a little girl named Destiny had taken off her purple coat there.
I picked up the pen.
And I made a check mark next to that one too.
The next Saturday, Ivy came to our house for breakfast.
She walked into the kitchen and stopped.
There on the old oak table, in front of her chair by the window, sat a bowl of chocolate ice cream. With sprinkles. A spoon standing in it.
She looked at me.
“Eat ice cream for breakfast,” I said. “Number two on the list. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
She laughed the hiccup laugh.
Then she sat down in her chair and ate every bite.
We haven’t gotten the puppy yet. Daniel says one thing at a time.
But I’ve caught him looking at pictures of puppies on his phone when he thinks I’m not watching.
Eighteen years ago, a scared little girl showed up on my doorstep with a duffel bag and asked how long she was allowed to stay.
I taught her to take one step. I told her I’d catch her if she fell.
And then I let fear lock the door to the yellow room, and turn off the radio, and pack my whole life into boxes in the attic.
The little girl I’d once taught to find her courage came back with my medals in her coat pocket.
And she helped me find mine.
Note: This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. All images are for illustration purposes only.
