Love

Because HOUSE OF DANCE is ultimately a story about learning to take care, and to love richly, I dedicated it to my father, who was my mother's guardian angel through her final days, and who still, eighteen months after her passing, passionately tends her resting place. Every day he is there, beside that spot near the woods. Every day the deer watch as my father kneels to root in the flowers he has found that remind him of her. The long, feathered graces of astilbe. The bright pots of color known as pink lady. The steadfast cure of japonica. He leads a line of water to the edged-in flowers. He clips the grass with a pair of shears.

So that when I'm there, when I go to talk to my mother, when I stand in the shadows that have been rearranged and lightened, I tell her how her husband is always near.