She smiled. “Let her stay. We’ll reschedule.”
“You sure?” Cole asked. “I hate that we wasted your time.”
She smiled. “It wasn’t a waste. I have a better idea of what I’m working with now.”
“And you haven’t given up yet?”
She shrugged. “You’re not completely hopeless.”
He took a step away. “I can’t even believe I’m doing this.”
“Just remember why you’re doing it.”
He texted Josh back to let him know that he didn’t need to bring Amelia, then watched as Charlotte moved across the studio with a quiet elegance that he was sure had been ingrained in her from the start. He thought about her letter to Julianna, the box of letters that he’d unloaded into his spare room, and he wondered how many other things she’d never done. All the things that came with attending high school and college—dances and parties and high school football games. She’d apparently never had a cinnamon roll until he came along, and today was the first day she’d received flowers from a man.
He probably shouldn’t be excited to have been that man, but he was.
After she mentioned at dinner that she’d never dated anybody, he’d spent more time thinking about that than he cared to admit. How did someone make it what had to be almost thirty years without a single date? Especially someone who looked like Charlotte. It seemed impossible.
And maybe that was the reason he wanted to protect her. Maybe he didn’t want her to stumble on a guy like Max, someone who was married when he met Gemma and still started an affair. Someone who continued that affair long after Gemma got married, as if he couldn’t pick between his wife and his girlfriend, as if he shouldn’t have to.
But he wasn’t the only guilty party in that scenario, was he? And Charlotte was nothing like Gemma.
“Okay, so, what? Practice again later this week?” Cole asked, shoving the thoughts aside. “I’ll bring Amelia with me next time.”
“Tomorrow.” Charlotte took off her dance shoes and pulled a pair of sandals from a bag leaning against the wall.
“So, is this an everyday thing?”
“This recital is only a month away.” She quirked a brow up at him, and he heard what she was too polite to say. If the goal was to keep him from making a fool of himself, then yes, they had to practice daily. He gave her a nod and stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“Does this time work? We can make it a standing date,” she said.
“Yep.”
She stood and slung the bag over her shoulder. “Great.”
“Great.”
They stared at each other for a long, awkward moment.
“I’ll walk you out,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said quietly. She picked up the bouquet, and they walked out of the studio, then down the hallway to the lobby. She stopped in front of a framed photo of Julianna, surrounded by little girls dressed up as ballerinas. Jules’s face was bright and happy, exactly the way Cole remembered her.
She’d loved being here, in this studio. She loved to dance, and sharing that love with her students gave her life meaning.
Her image looked back at him, eyes bright and kind, not a trace of inauthenticity anywhere. And even though Julianna’s passion could sometimes get her in trouble—she was a bit of a hothead, after all—his sister loved with her whole heart. She did everything she could to make the world a better place.
Maybe God had taken the wrong sibling.
At his side, he felt Charlotte’s eyes on him. “What are you thinking about?”
Normally, a question like that would’ve sent him running for the door, but he had a feeling Charlotte would understand.
“I was thinking about Jules,” he said.
She shifted. “I think about her a lot.”
Cole’s mind wandered back to the day Julianna found out the truth about Gemma’s affair. She showed up at the door, forced him to shower, and then dragged him to her house for dinner.
She fed him pot roast and made him help with the kids’ bedtime duties while Connor cleaned up the kitchen.
She didn’t treat him differently, didn’t look at him like he was a failure. In fact, she made him feel normal. And for a minute, he almost believed there was joy to be had again, that just because he’d been unlucky in love, that didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Of course, that feeling hadn’t lasted long, but it had been there for a moment, because of her.
At his side, Charlotte touched the photo.
“You miss her,” he said, aware that their collective grief could bond them together.
She nodded.
“I miss her too.”
“You two were close,” she said—a statement, not a question.
“We were,” he said. “After our mom left, we kind of had to fend for ourselves. I told myself I needed to take care of Jules, but the truth is, we took care of each other.”
“She had a way of doing that.” Charlotte smiled. “Of taking care of people. It was kind of her thing.”
He nodded. “She was special. Always put everyone else first. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why she quit performing. That was the one thing she did for herself.”
Charlotte looked away.
“But, in typical Julianna fashion, she turned it into something she could give back to other people. Nothing made her happier than teaching.”
“You really think so?” Charlotte started toward the door. “I mean, you really think she was happy here?”
He followed her outside, and they stopped on the sidewalk in front of the studio.
“I do,” he said. “I mean, not at first. She never told me what happened with dance or why she decided to quit, but I know it wasn’t an easy decision.”
“How do you know?”
He shrugged. “She was devastated. There was a program she’d been working really hard to get into, and when they didn’t take her, she took it as a sign. She came back here, broken heart and everything, and for a long time, I worried about her. She was so not herself. Sad. Mopey. Depressed.”
Charlotte watched him intently.
“You probably already know this,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Not all of it. I mean, I remember when she told me she was quitting. I tried to talk her out of it.”
His mind wandered back to the letter he’d read. Charlotte pleaded with his sister. It was clear Charlotte needed Julianna as much as the rest of them. Her death had to be weighing heavily on her. They had that in common.
Was that why she’d been crying earlier?
“I guess I wondered how she got from there to here,” Charlotte said. “And I always wondered if she made the right decision.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I do think she was really happy here. She met Connor a few months later, and they dreamed up this studio together. She had a great life, one I really don’t think she would’ve traded.”
“Really?” Charlotte’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears, as if she needed the assurance for herself.
“Really.”
She looked away, giving him ample time to study the curve of her shoulders, the slant of her nose, the smoothness of her skin.