Do you understand what has happened? Evelyn asked. Her voice was steady, but her hands were not. "That video is everywhere, Daphne. Donors are calling. The foundation board is calling. People are asking questions I don't know how to answer."
I'm sorry, Daphne said. It came out automatically, the way apologies always did at the home. Then she stopped herself. "No. I'm not sorry I danced."
Evelyn stared at her. "I know you're not. That's what frightens me." She stood and walked to the window, looking out at the courtyard where the children were lining up for breakfast. "This home runs on one man's money, Daphne. You know that. Braddock's pledge pays for the roof, the food, the school fees. If he walks away, we close. Not in a year. In months."
Daphne's throat tightened. She thought of Maya, of the little ones, of the beds lined up in the dormitory. She thought of her mother's shoes, hidden in the plastic bag in her drawer upstairs.
I didn't ask him to put me on that stage, she said quietly.
I know. Evelyn turned back, and her eyes were wet. "I know, sweetheart. But knowing that doesn't pay the light bill."
The phone rang. Evelyn looked at it as if it were a live animal. She picked it up, listened, and said, "Yes, Mr. Braddock. Yes, of course. I'll—" She stopped. She listened for a long time. Daphne watched the color drain from her face.
When Evelyn set the receiver down, her hand stayed on it a moment too long.
His pledge, she said, "is now conditional."
The conditions arrived the next morning in a letter, hand-delivered by a courier in a dark suit, on paper so thick it barely bent. Evelyn read it twice in her office, then called Daphne in and read it aloud, her voice flattening with every line.
Braddock's pledge would stand, the letter said, but only if the home took corrective action. Daphne Wallace was to be disciplined for her behavior at the gala. The home was to state, in writing, that it did not endorse or encourage her dancing. And Daphne was to have no further contact with the press, with donors, or with anyone seeking to exploit the incident for publicity.
He wants me erased, Daphne said.
He wants the story erased, Evelyn corrected, but her voice had no conviction in it. She folded the letter and set it on the desk between them. "Daphne, I have forty-one children in this house. If the pledge goes, the county won't take them all. Some of them will be split up. You know what that means."
Daphne knew. She had been split from everything once herself.
What do you need me to do? she asked.
Evelyn closed her eyes. "Kitchen duty. Full time, for the rest of the month. No evenings in the hall. And the shoes—" She stopped.
The shoes, Daphne repeated.
They have to go into the office safe, Evelyn said. "It's in the letter. No, don't argue. He knows about them. Someone told him about the bag. If an inspector or a reporter finds them in your drawer, he'll say we defied him."
Daphne went upstairs without another word. She took the plastic bag from her drawer and held it in both hands. The silver shoes inside were scuffed and dull, the satin worn thin at the toes, the ribbons frayed. They had been her mother's. Grace Wallace had danced in them, and then she had died, and the shoes had come to Daphne in a box with her mother's name written on it in a social worker's handwriting. They were the only thing Daphne owned that had ever belonged to someone who loved her.
She carried them downstairs and set the bag on Evelyn's desk. Evelyn opened the safe behind her chair, placed the bag inside, and turned the key. The click was small and final.
I'm sorry, Evelyn whispered. "I truly am."
Daphne nodded, because there was nothing else to do with the words. She went to the kitchen and tied on an apron.
The days that followed were long and gray. She scrubbed pots until her hands were raw. She peeled potatoes until the pile seemed to grow back as fast as she worked. She served breakfast and lunch and dinner, and at night she lay in her bed and listened to Tasha breathing in the next bed, and to the old house settling around them.
The kitchen had its own weather. In the mornings it was steam and clatter, the cooks shouting over the roar of the ovens, the younger children banging through with trays. Daphne learned the rhythm of it the way she had once learned the rhythm of the waltz: the six o'clock kettles, the seven o'clock rush, the long afternoon lull when the light came slanting through the high windows and the dishwater went gray. Mrs. Alvarez, the head cook, was gruff but not unkind; on the second day she showed Daphne how to hold a knife so it would not bite her fingers, and on the third day she slipped her an extra piece of cornbread when she thought no one was looking.
Tasha came to find her whenever she could. She brought news like contraband: the video had passed a hundred thousand views; a local radio host had talked about it; two donors had called Evelyn to say they were proud of Daphne, and Evelyn had thanked them in a voice that sounded like it might break. Tasha also brought warnings. Evelyn's assistant had been asking the girls questions, casual ones, about where Daphne went at night. Tasha had told her, with great innocence, that Daphne went to bed, like everyone else.
She's scared, Tasha said, leaning against the counter while Daphne stacked plates. "Evelyn, I mean. Not of you. Of him. She checks the safe three times a day, like she's afraid the shoes will escape on their own."