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“Anyway, after a back-and-forth full of threats and denials, he told her that she would be taking over, and she said yes. I told you that much in the hospital. The rest is history, as they say. And as they write in my medical chart.”
Juliette smiled at her own joke, but Francesca just closed her eyes and Helena covered her mouth with her fingertips as if trying to keep words from escaping.
“What is happening?”
Finally, after what seemed like forever, Helena dropped her hand. “Juliette, why didn’t you tell us all this years ago? Why didn’t you tell us Foltin accused Katarina of the sabotage?”
Juliette shrugged. “Does it matter? It’s water under a burned bridge anyway.”
And how to explain that talking about it now was like pulling her own nails from her fingers? That she would have gladly never mentioned Katarina’s name at all? How to express howthe betrayal shaped her entire being, not just in the form of her broken leg and barely functioning knee, but never allowing her heart to let anyone else in—and wasn’t that a life of deprivation much larger than her inability to ever dance again?
“Juliette, it was never her. Amor, had I known you blamed her, I’d have told you much sooner. It was never her.” Francesca’s words like bullets shattered the glass pane of Juliette’s silence.
Helena laid a hand on the agitated shoulder as Francesca struggled to get up.
“It was me, amor. The ice, the shoes… It was me all along.”
Juliette heard the sound of her glass shattering, the remnants of red wine splattering on the tiles. Had she dropped it? Had Francesca tried to sabotage her last season at Garnier?
“But…”
Juliette had no idea but what. Or but why. Did it matter? Her closest friend. The person she trusted.
“I told you in the hospital that Lalande had been after me and my name and my projects for years after I refused to resign to make room for Foltin. And I suspected that with him as Minister of Culture and his power over Paris Opera Ballet unchecked, he’d remove me. And he’d destroy everything I had built. Out of pure spite. His hyenas in the press nearly ruined you for two years with their awful reviews. Why, do you think? You were mine, my Étoile, my star. Our names were linked. Two women leading the Paris Opera Ballet. And you know how much he hates women.”
Francesca could not seem to stop speaking. Gone was the reticence. Gone were the hints. Truth was bubbling to the surface, pouring like champagne at a funeral. Out of place and much too late. Seven years too late. Juliette closed her eyes and let it wash over her anyway.
“I tried to remove you for short time frames, just long enough to spare you the awfulness of the press and the association with me, thinking the new director would allow you to remain if they believed you were not part of Bianchi’s most recent failures, likeDon Quixote. I wanted you to stay in Paris. To keep triumphing.”
“And yet you worked on Shannon to invite me to London?” Juliette found her voice even if she wasn’t at all certain she truly cared about this one question.
“That was me, dear.” Helena’s answer was barely audible, and it was that whisper that tipped the scales of Juliette’s heartbreak. She touched her own sternum, as if holding her hand there would salvage what was left of her needlework. The stitches twanged with the intensity of her pain.
Seven years. Seven years, and much of them a lie? The road to hell and the good intentions that paved it swam up in her mind, but she shook her head.
“Anything else?” Juliette could barely push the words out of her mouth. When both Francesca and Helena remained silent, Juliette allowed a little of her anger to escape. “Any fucking thing else? How else have people been running my life without asking me once for my opinion? Do I have agency in this manuscript you are all weaving? You almost broke my legs to spare me, what? Bad reviews? And you made me think I had to forsake Paris and bought me a safe passage to London, for what? All I had to do was stay and fight for my place!”
Francesca bit her lip, and when she spoke her tone was pacifying, which only made Juliette more furious.
“Amor, that isn’t quite true?—”
“How is it not true?” Juliette jumped up at her own shout.
“Because, no matter how much Francesca wished you to keep dancing at Palais Garnier, you’d have not kept your place. That’s not how the world works, Jett. And Cesca should’ve known better, but that’s not the subject of this conversation.” Helenathrew her friend a decidedly evil glare. “You, Jett… You were the best dancer, but it didn’t matter. Hence Cesca’s attempts to shield you, idiotic as they might have been. Hence me asking Shannon for a favor, though I assure you London would have jumped at the chance to hire you. But maybe being the best always has sheltered you from the reality that talent alone means nothing. Life isn’t fair.”
Helena crossed her arms around her chest and went on.
“Katarina is the best Soviet ballerina to ever grace the stage of Bolshoi. And it still didn’t matter. They marginalized her and treated her like shit. You don’t get what you deserve, Juliette. You get what they give you, and a ballerina is dispensable. Someone is always more talented, someone is always willing to do more to fight for the prize. Fight dirty. You had never done anything but dance. You, with your chivalry, kindness, and your wholesomeness and your unbeatable jump…”
Helena stumbled over the last word, perhaps realizing what she had said, and Juliette’s cane by the front door, visible from the kitchen, was an eyesore.
Juliette wiped away the bitter tears. It felt imperative that she speak, even if she couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her tone.
“Well, there’s no more kindness, wholesomeness, and certainly no more jumps. As for chivalry, there’s not a day that passes that I don’t regret that I saved her.”
“Do you? Juliette, she was the love of your life?—”
The peel of laughter Juliette let out scratched her throat raw.
