Winter in June by Kathryn Miller Haines Read Free Book Online Page B

what he was carrying so that he could catch her.
    â€œAre you all right?” asked Jayne.
    The dentist slid Kay the remaining distance to the floor, keeping her torso propped up on his. Her upper body teetered from right to left, before settling in the middle.
    â€œI’m just feeling a little faint,” said Kay. “I think I’m…. I’m…” She clasped her hand over her mouth and scrambled to her feet. With the grace of a stilt walker cursed with uneven legs, she stumbled out of the ballroom.
    My stomach lurched and the soda crackers I’d had the night before threatened to evacuate. I took a deep breath, hoping it would pass, but the ship chose that moment to switch from a zig to a zag.
    I ran after Kay with my own hand plastered across my mouth.
    I heard her before I saw her. She was kneeling in front of one of the toilets in the ladies’ room. I entered the stall next to her and completed my own foul business. Stomach emptied, I did my best to clean myself up before turning my attention to her.
    â€œYou all right?” I asked.
    â€œOh, you know.” She lurched again. When she came up for air, her face was a mess of smeared makeup, tear stains, and blotchy skin.
    â€œI would’ve thought that after twenty-four hours at sea you were safe.”
    â€œGuess I’m just lucky,” she said. If there was more to this story, she wasn’t sharing it.
    â€œThe good news is it will pass eventually.” I handed her a wad of toilet paper and helped her mop up her face. “I’ll bet by tomorrow you’ll be good as new.”
    She rested her forehead in her hand, and a shiver passed through her body. “I hope you’re right, but I doubt it.”
    Â 
    I helped Kay back to the cabin and arranged for her to get some ginger ale and crackers. By the time I returned to the mess hall,the pianist—Dr. McDaniels—was playing some fast paced instrumental piece that the others were whirling around to, their faces red from effort and laughter. Even though Jayne and Violet both performed the steps with much more skill, it was Gilda that my eyes were drawn to. She was radiant as she twirled, acknowledging her mistakes with a grin and a roll of her eyes. Eventually she conceded that she couldn’t keep up with the two of them, and she left them to their energetic jig while she joined me to catch her breath.
    â€œHow’s Kay?” she asked me.
    â€œI’m not sure. I get the feeling that it wasn’t just motion sickness that hit her. She’s an odd one.”
    â€œAnd a talented one,” said Gilda. “You should’ve heard her sing earlier. It gave me shivers.”
    Rehearsal lasted for two hours. Practicing dance moves on a ship at sea was a terrible idea, even when the routines that Gilda choreographed were so simple that…well…under normal circumstances, even I could do them. Gilda was a patient teacher, though, who never demanded perfection out of any of us but rather praised us for simply putting in the effort to be there.
    In other words, she was the exact opposite of every director I’d worked with in the past.
    I should have found it cloying, but it was clear Gilda wasn’t paring things back because she didn’t think we were capable of doing any better. She understood that spending our days putting polish on footwork and all those other little niceties that turned a show into a Show was silly. The people we would be performing for wanted to be entertained. They didn’t care if we had perfect extension, timing, or pitch.
    Violet was wrong in her prediction that Gilda would make herself the focus of the show. Gilda insisted that, in addition to the group numbers, we would each share the spotlight based on whatever particular skill we excelled at. I wasn’t sure the audience would be so thrilled if our star periodically receded into the background; nor did I think it possible that they