Annabel Joseph - Firebird

“I’m just… That lift…”

“No.” He took her hand, made her focus. “This isn’t about the lift. This is about why Prosper is so afraid. Why Prosper has to be perfect. Why Prosper can never be happy with herself.”

He tried to make her look at him, but she pulled away with a fresh torrent of tears, burying her face in the pile of skirts beside her.

“Prosper. Talk to me.”

“I can’t!”

“I need to know.” He pulled her away from the skirts and encircled her in a tight grasp. “Talk to me. Let me help you. Please! I love you. And I’m warning you, we’re not leaving this pile of tulle until you open up to me.”

Her sobs were broken by a soft giggle.

“That’s right. This tulle is itchy, and it probably hasn’t been washed since Nutcracker ended. It smells weird too. Now talk.”

She buried her face in his side. She was quiet a long moment, but then she finally spoke in a quavery voice.

“I killed someone.”

Jackson froze. Not what he’d expected. “You what?”

She started to cry again. “I killed my baby sister.”

Jackson rubbed her back, slow and steady, considering what to say. “Tell me what happened.”

“My mother was upstairs. She was sleeping. She’d been up late with my stepfather fighting. I was playing with my dolls, and I didn’t see my sister open the door. She had just turned two. I didn’t see her leave!”

She was shivering. Jackson pulled her closer and stroked her hair. “I’m sure you didn’t.”

“If I had seen her, I would have told my mother, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was playing wedding with my dolls. Barbie and Ken were getting married.” She sniffled. “My sister crossed the street and wandered into a retention pond. She drowned. They looked for her everywhere, and they finally found her there in the water. And my mother…”

Something inside Jackson shuddered. “She said it was your fault.”

“If I had been paying attention, if I had been watching her… If I had only seen her—I was so caught up in myself!”

Jackson frowned against her hair, aghast at the horrible implication that she had been at fault. “How old were you, Prosper?”

“I was four. I was old enough—”

“Old enough to parent a two-year-old?”

“I was almost five!”

“Your mother blamed you because she couldn’t blame herself.” Jackson’s heart clenched as he thought of Prosper as an innocent four-year-old, blamed for her mother’s awful mistake. “Prosper, your mother was responsible for your sister, not you. You were only a child yourself. She only blamed you because she couldn’t deal with her own guilt.”

“But the truth is, I…” Her face crumpled into more guilty tears as she looked up at him. She looked like a child herself, the terrified four-year-old she must have been. “I was jealous of my sister. I dreamed about her getting lost so it could be just me and my mother again. I wanted my mom all to myself. I didn’t want her to be married to my stepdad. I didn’t want her to have his child and love her more than me. I hated my baby sister. So when she drowned, when my mother said it was my fault, I really did believe it was my fault. That somehow I had wanted her to drown.” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

“Oh, Prosper.” He stared at the bowed head before him, the bright red hair that had marked her as an error in judgment from birth. Not her error, but her mother and father’s. He thought of her as a four-year-old, the weight of guilt she’d shouldered over an innocuous mistake, and the penance of perfection she’d carried for twenty years since then. He took her in his arms and rocked her, wishing he could take it all away. Wishing he could beat her mother senseless for what she’d done. “Prosper,” he said in her ear, “you can’t take the blame for what happened to your sister. It was a terrible mistake, but it wasn’t your mistake. Your mother should have been watching her.”

“But what if I make another big mistake?” she sobbed. “What if something terrible happens?”

“So to prevent that, you spend every waking moment trying to be perfect? Don’t you see, Prosper, how silly that is? Life happens. Accidents happen no matter how hard you try. But you don’t have to be perfect for me to love you. Mistakes are part of life. Nobody’s perfect. Nobody should try to be. It can’t be that important to you. It shouldn’t be—”

“I want to be perfect for you!”

“Movements, steps can be perfect. People can’t.”

“I can be. If I try. I want to be perfect for you. I want you to love me! If you ever stopped loving me—”

He put a finger to her lips. “I love you as you are, Prosper. My love is not conditional.”

He watched her. Her hands were in little fists against his chest. Her lips trembled, and her eyes were shimmery with tears. He wiped at her damp cheeks.

“Do you think I’ll stop loving you? Really, Prosper? If you make an innocent mistake?”

He felt her body shake against his. All those tears. How many tears had she stored up inside?

“You know what?” he said. “You can slaughter my ballet at the premiere. You can fall off pointe and miss every turn. You can kick Blake in the nuts during every single fucking passé , and I’ll still love you. I will. You could never make enough mistakes to make me love you less. Never.”

She was quiet a moment, then whispered into the hollow of his shoulder, “What if I turn in on that lift?”

“Well then, I’ll fucking kill you, Prosper. I swear to God I will.” Her soft giggle made some hard knot of worry inside him thaw. She would be all right. Now that he knew what haunted her, knew why she drove herself so hard, he could start to reverse the damage her mother had done.

“Beautiful girl,” he said against her ear, “you’re more to me than some fucking ballet. Don’t you know that?”

She made a soft noise of assent against his chest.

“No. Say it to me. Out loud. I’m more to you than some fucking ballet.”

“I’m more to you than some fucking ballet.”

“Like you mean it.”

“I’m more to you than some fucking ballet!” she repeated, giggling.

“Damn skippy. Now let’s crawl out of this tulle hole. You hit the showers, and we’ll go home. I think it’s high time you moved back into my room.”

The walk home seemed interminable to Prosper. It had been weeks since he’d made love to her. He hadn’t even spanked her, although she’d done everything in her power to provoke him before giving up.

“ I’ll spank you when I’m damn ready to, Prosper ,” he’d told her. “ And I’ll do a whole lot more than that too. Now eat your dinner .” He’d checked her weight to make sure it was going up and forced her back to healthy habits. She slept better. She felt healthier now, stronger.

And now that she’d told him her terrible guilty secret, she felt healthier mentally as well. She couldn’t live in fear of accidents. She had to appreciate what she had. She had to live her life and not be afraid of not being perfect.

As they neared the house, Jackson squeezed her hand and looked down at her.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked with a smile. “Naughty thoughts?”

“Yes. And about how much I love you. How lucky I am.”

“How lucky we are.”

He led her inside and straight up to the bedroom. He was silent as he stripped off her clothes. He touched her all over, his big hands stroking, holding, pinching, brushing over her skin. She shivered, cold and hot at once. He twisted his hands in her hair and kissed her forehead.

“Undress me.”

Prosper pulled off his shirt. She had to touch, desperately wanted to touch. She moved forward, ran her fingers up and down the smooth ridges that defined his midsection. She traced his shoulders and went up on her toes to kiss the birthmark just below his neck. He drew in his breath, his fingers skimming the sides of her hips, then pushed her back. “Focus. What did I tell you to do?”