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Allaire Tremblay dancing alone. She dances to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake from Act II, seemingly unaware that class is scheduled to start soon. She’s oblivious to her captivated audience of one, unaware that her star student—the silent voyeur—watches. Me .
    Her legs move freely, so sinewy and taunt. Only her face belies her youth, although she gracefully moves across the floor with such enviable confidence and fluidity that she remains unsurpassed as the best dancer I’ve ever seen. She would seem to be a girl of twenty, not a woman approaching forty. With angst and fascination, I gaze at her from behind the marble pillar at the far end just out of sight of the gigantic mirrors that grace all four walls of the dance studio and normally provide Allaire Tremblay with an uncanny view of all that goes on in her renowned dance studio. The music echoes and seemingly pulses with her movements. Tremblay continues to perform at a high level. She artfully executes the most complicated steps in this pivotal scene with enviable ease. She is not so much a part of the dance as the epitome of it, serving as the very definition of both perfection and beauty. Her mastery of the intricate movements from the strength of her leg as it lifts into a perfect arabesque to the endless execution of the tortuous foutes is not lost on me. Taxing, difficult. Tremblay makes it look easy. Envy washes over me as if perfectly timed to coincide with the knowable sadness that still follows me around like a chronic flu.
    Will I ever be as good as Tremblay? Admiration and hate for the accomplished principal ballerina course through me at an astonishing rate as if these two feelings have been synchronized with my heart beat.
    Even as a teacher, Tremblay’s demand for perfection prevails. The woman has zero tolerance for laziness, tardiness, or absence—no matter how profound, no matter how gut-wrenching, no matter how devastating. She expects and demands her students to be here.
    And, I’ve been gone for nine weeks.
    Even as I entered the premises, I experienced a good dose of trepidation that has now developed into downright palpable fear as to what she will say to me when she sees me. Tremblay expects her students to be ready to go at precisely nine in the morning on weekends and four in the afternoon three times a week, at a minimum. Seven days a week, if you’re serious.
    I have been serious for the past seven years, up until two months ago.
    I’m almost catatonic—suddenly impaled by certain grief and this appreciable unease at having displeased her with my continual absence these past weeks—these now threaten to overtake my weakened psyche. Apprehension tears through me but a small part of me still besieged by the endless sorrow is prepared to do ferocious battle with the unexpected cold front that is so clearly Allaire Tremblay. This numb part of me that has almost brought me to my knees even now, on this day, just another day like yesterday, and the day before that one, which always has me silently asking: Why am I still here? As if anyone would answer or know of one possible reason for this.
    Holly is dead . The thought assails me yet again.
    I’m stolen from the respite of this almost dreamlike state in watching Tremblay’s impromptu performance and plunged into harsh reality by grief again. It feels like a punch to the gut. Well, what I imagine that would feel like. The assailant is grief. The aggressor is fear. A double dose. Only the pillar I still hide behind provides me with solace. I tightly grip the cold marble and lean further into it, suddenly engulfed in this strange fervent hope of finding some kind of relief from all of it for a just a little while longer.
    My movements, unchecked, disturb the prima ballerina’s concentration. Tremblay stops dancing and glances my way. She purses her lips, intimating deep tumultuous thoughts, and gets this disdainful look. She will be both judge and jury of my fate.
    “Talia,” she says.