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"Daddy wasn't here," Cinnamon insisted, but she shook her head.

"Yes, he was. He said he wanted to stop the nightmares. He was right here," she added, patting the large fluffy pillow beside her.

Cinnamon looked at me. I shook my head. "What is she saying?"

"Howard," Cinnamon replied.

"What do you mean?"

Cinnamon's eyes grew dark.

"He came up here and did some role-playing with her. He must have been coming up here. Who knows how many times?"

I shook my head.

"What..."

"Can't you see? She's naked under the blanket," Cinnamon pointed out. Her face was so full of rage, I thought her eyes might explode. The muscles in her cheeks and jaw were taut enough to outline the bone.

The realization struck me like a punch in my stomach. "That's horrible," I said.

She nodded.

"Horrible's too soft a word for it."

"Please tell me a story," Gerta said. "Tell me something nice. Tell me a happy story."

Cinnamon looked at her and then muttered to me. "I'm flat out of happy endings."

"Let me," I said, moving past her to take Gerta's hand and sit on the bed.

"Let me tell you the story

of the little princess who got lost," I began.

Cinnamon smiled but her thoughts clearly went back to Howard Rockwell. She stepped aside to wait for me to finish, fuming so intensely. I could almost feel the heat of her anger across the room.

Gerta's eyes closed finally and I stood up. Cinnamon and I moved silently out of the apartment and through the costume room, locking the door behind us, and then went down the stairs, neither of us saving a word. Disgust and horror made us mute.

"What are we going to do?" I asked her when we reached the bottom of the stairs.

She glared at Howard's closed door. "Bring down the curtain," she vowed.

"How?"

"Get some sleep. We're all going to need it," she replied and went to her room.

Get some sleep? I thought.

She might as well have asked me to build a house or fly to the moon.

15 The Play's the Thing

If someone had asked me, after the first few weeks at the Senetsky School of Performing Arts, who among the four of you girls do you believe could most easily toss it all away. I think I would have chosen myself. I played the violin with love. but I was always torn between home and the places I knew my musical career would take me. I wasn't sure if I wanted to make all those sacrifices. I wasn't sure if I really was as ambitious as the others. Personal glory didn't seem as important to me. Going home would not be a defeat and a punishment.

Ice wanted to succeed for her father even more than she wanted it for herself. During the times she and I were alone, she often spoke of him with deep affection, and made it clear to me that she believed she was his hope, the only thing that brought sunshine to his days and filled his heart with dreams anymore. She told me about his own longing to be a successful musician and how he had been forced to give up his pursuit. Like so many people, she said, he had to surrender his ambitions in order to provide for his family and himself. He moved through life now as if he were a shadow of a person, doing most things simply to survive, but the one thing that he didn't do out of any necessity was to get behind her

development as a singer.