But Prosper still worried. To Jackson’s chagrin, she still fell victim to fits of panic and insecurity. The difficult lift, where Blake sent her airborne, still didn’t meet Jackson’s approval because she was too fearful to do it right.
“You’re turning in! Try again.”
Blake nodded. “You’re turning in, Prosper. I’m more likely to drop you that way. Just trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Prosper said, stalking back across the floor to get back in position.
“You’re a Firebird!” said Jackson. “You’re supposed to be on fucking fire! No fear!”
She spun on him. “No fear? What is that? I don’t understand that as it pertains to this lift!”
“No fear! Come on, Prosper. You can do this! Just stop stressing so much and fucking do it! It’s your self-doubt, it’s your own mind that stops you.”
“I know that! God!” She ran from the room. Blake glared at him.
“Smooth. Nice pep talk.”
“I don’t see you trying to shore up her confidence.”
“Shore up her confidence? I told you, she doesn’t have any. Everything she does comes from a place of fear.” Blake snorted and turned to stretch against the barre, but Jackson froze still. “Everything she does comes from a place of fear.”
It was true. Why hadn’t he ever pieced it together before? Fear of failure, fear of displeasing him. Fear of not being good enough. Blake, with the strange connection dance partners developed, had understood it. Somehow Jackson had not.
“That’s it for today,” he said to Blake. He went in search of Prosper and found her in the back of the costume closet, hiding behind a mountain of tulle.
“Prosper, honey.”
The tulle shifted, sniffled. Revealed a shock of tousled orange waves. She’d pulled down her bun so she could hide her tearful face behind the curtain of her hair.
“Come here.” He got down on the floor beside her and pushed away the pile of costumes. “I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk. I just want to be alone.”
“Maybe so, but we’re going to talk. I want you to tell me.”
She drew a hand across her cheek, smeared tears across tiny freckles. “Tell you what?”
“Tell me what you’re hiding. Tell me why you’re so afraid.”
“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?”