Dying for a Dance Read Online Free PDF Page B

did not deserve to die.
    We arrived at my car. Paula and I hugged each other good-bye, females bonding through a tragic event. I remained deep in thought as I pulled out of the lot, my periwinkle Prius directly behind Paula's black Mercedes SUV. Based on her car of choice, Paula could easily afford so many private lessons.
    My own lessons with Bobby cost fifty dollars an hour. As the top teacher in the studio, Dimitri charged seventy-five an hour. Paula must really be motivated to compete. If Liz hadn't insisted on paying for my private lessons, I wouldn't have been able to afford even one hour with my teacher.
    Who would have thought when Liz and I met at college, two escapees from a drunken frat party that twenty years later I would be dancing at her wedding. Although this time, I hoped my escort would skip the fringed lampshade on his head.
    Liz and Brian had met through a local dating agency called the Love Club. I'd joined the same dating service with far less success but I was thrilled they had found one another. My best friend had waited a long time to find her Prince Charming and she deserved to live the fairy tale of “happily ever after.”
    As I drove home, I mulled over the events of the evening. Irina's furious response to her husband's bizarre death saddened me. Having suffered the pain and rejection of my ex-husband's infidelity, I could empathize with her in that respect. But her violent reaction seemed extreme by any standard. Was her anger merely the result of a hormone imbalance due to her pregnancy? Or was the fiery widow capable of killing her unfaithful husband?
    Could a marriage go so wrong that one partner was willing to murder the other?
    These negative thoughts swirled through my mind as I approached the house that my ex-husband, Hank, a contractor, had built shortly after Jenna's birth. Despite our marriage disintegrating more than two years ago, Hank had agreed that I should remain in the house where our children had been raised. Lately, it seemed like creaks and cracks were appearing in our home on a daily basis.
    I twisted my head to the left to check for traffic and my neck creaked in response. My body was also starting to show its age. And I was still a few months shy of forty. Ballroom dancing was lauded for improving balance, brain acuity, and plain old weight control. I'd be thrilled if I could see improvement in any one of those areas.
    Actually I'd be thrilled if I could put my panty hose on while standing.
    I pulled into the driveway of our Craftsman style home, squeezed the car into our filled-beyond-capacity two car garage, and entered the house through the connecting garage door. The hallway and kitchen were both dark. My children used to burn electricity with the willful abandon of millionaires, but now that they'd been taught the benefits of “going green,” it was all I could do to get them to use a sixty-watt bulb in their bedrooms.
    Ben's latest ploy to avoid doing homework was his claim that by not using electricity he was helping the environment.
    Nice try, but his mother wasn't born yesterday. I hit the light switch, which illuminated the bright yellow kitchen walls. My rooster clock glared at me from its perch above the sink displaying the time as nine thirty. Ben should be in bed, but Jenna was probably still up studying. My daughter was only a junior, but she had already decided she wanted to be an astronaut, or at least the first person to build a vacation home on the moon.
    My seven-year-old just wanted to know if the man on the moon was bald.
    I climbed the stairs then pushed open the door and peered into Ben's room. Beams of moonlight glinted on the posters lining his walls. Batman and Superman posters were intertwined with ferocious dinosaurs. A poster of a Tyrannosaurus Rex hung over his bed. With its jaws wide open, the T-Rex looked poised to devour my son for a snack.
    It never ceased to amaze me how Ben could sleep surrounded by creatures that were right out of