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mention my name.
    "Janet will blossom like a flower in our soil, won't she, Sanford?"
"Yes, dear," he said. "Please. Just rest a bit now. It's been a very long and emotional day for all of us."
"And when she does," Celine continued, ignoring him, "she will dazzle audiences the way I was meant to dazzle them."
Dazzle audiences? I thought. Me? The one the other children called Miss Fraidy Cat for as long as I could remember? The one who couldn't speak loud enough for someone right beside me to hear properly? Perform before audiences and dazzle them? How could I? As soon as Celine and Sanford realized I couldn't, they would send me back. I was so sure of it, my heart shriveled into a tight little knot. The beautiful room, this home, the promise of a family, all of it really was just a dream. I bowed my head and slowly descended the stairs.
I wandered into the living room and gazed up at the painting of Celine that hung above the mantel. The artist had captured her in the middle of a leap, maybe that changement de pieds she had described. Her legs, the ones that were hidden under a blanket, lifeless and limp now, looked shapely and muscular in the painting. She resembled a bird, soaring, just as she had described how I would feel someday. How graceful and beautiful she looked against the dark background. The painting was so lifelike, I half expected her to land before me.
"So here you are." I turned to see Sanford in the doorway. "Celine's taking a little rest. Come on. I'll show you our grounds. We'll walk down to the lake," he added and I noticed that he spoke in an entirely different voice when Celine wasn't around.
When we got outside I saw that the sky had cleared as Celine had said it would. I was beginning to wonder if everyone and everything did as Celine asked.
"This way," Sanford said, turning right at the bottom of the steps. He walked with his hands behind his back, his tall, lean body leaning forward. He took long, lanky strides, one for every two of mine. "This house was a find. It was in very good shape for its age, but we made a number of changes and improvements," he said. "I'm sure you will be as happy here as we have been, Janet." He smiled at me and nodded at the descending hillside before us. "Just over the crest is our lake. I have a rowboat, but we haven't used it for some time. Can you swim?"
"No sir," I said softly, afraid to add another "can't" to my name Can't dance. Can't swim. Can't stay.
"Oh, well, that will have to be remedied before summer, and please, don't call me sir. If you can't call me Dad yet, just call me Sanford, okay?" His eyes twinkled and I relaxed and smiled back at him. Somehow I'd already gotten the impression that Sanford was going to be a lot easier to please than Celine.
We walked on.
"I have a service that comes twice a week to care for the grounds," he said. He waved his long arm toward the east. "We own all this property and then some. I've left woods intact so we have the privacy and the feeling we're out in nature. We're really not that far from the city. The private school you'll attend is only fifteen miles away, actually. Celine has already made all the arrangements. I just have to bring you there to enroll you."
"She has?" It made me feel strange to think that Celine had been planning a life for me, for us, before I'd even met her. What if I had said no to going home with them? But then, I was an orphan, and orphans never say no.
Sanford laughed at the perplexed look on my face.
"Oh yes. Celine has been preparing for your arrival literally from the first moment she set eyes on you, Janet. I'll never forget that day. She was so excited, she couldn't sleep and she wouldn't stop talking about you. She talked late into the night and when I woke up the next morning, your name was the first word on her lips."
Rather than fill me with joy, these words sent tiny electric shocks of fear along my spine. What did Celine see in me that I couldn't see in myself, that no one had ever