Free The Midnight Dancers: A Fairy Tale Retold by Regina Doman Page A

course, we were doing it with the young ones, before Paul came and stole them away from us. So we’re just bringing the rest of the dresses down to the cave to wait for them.”
    “I see,” Rachel said, “and you might just forget and leave them down there.”
    “We might,” Liddy giggled.
    “I see,” Rachel said, and closed her eyes again. She wondered to herself if there was a dress somewhere in the house that she could wear. There was something about seeing guys on summer nights that made her want to dress up.  But she didn’t exactly want to go in an old dress-up gown or discarded bridesmaid dress. Her own bridesmaid dress from her father’s second marriage had been made for her before she really hit her growth spurt—no question of her fitting into it now. Besides, it was pale blue cotton with ivory roses on it. At the time, she had picked out the fabric herself. But now it seemed like fabric for a naïve little girl, not for someone—well, like herself.
    Remembering picking out the bridesmaid dresses turned over painful memories. Her mother’s death was something she had pushed to the furthest reaches of her mind. For a long time her father had seemed so anxious that she not be psychologically disturbed by the tragedy, and had arranged a plethora of counseling services for her, and would probably do so again, instantly, if he had any idea that she was still struggling with it. But she was weary of talking about the pain, and just wanted it to die away quietly in the back of her mind, alone and unnoticed.
    The one good outcome of Mom’s dying was that for a while, it seemed, she and her father had been very close. He depended on her, the oldest, to keep the other girls together, to soak up their grief and more than that, to look after them, cook for them, feed them, keep them clothed, to run the household, especially when his military duties called.
    Then he had met Sallie, and things had begun to change.  Rachel remembered bitterly the night Dad had taken her, Rachel, out to dinner, and told her about his plans to marry again. “You’ve been taking on the responsibilities of an adult, and you shouldn’t have to do that yet at your age. I want you to be free to be a child again, and enjoy being a young person.”  
    Perhaps he meant it to be comforting, but for Rachel, he was stripping her of her newfound maturity. He was taking away part of her identity, even though he hadn’t realized it.  So here she was, capable of running a house, but unable to do it as she wanted, because it was no longer her house. Yet she still had to live under her father’s roof, and be a child, and she was sick of being a child.
    And her father, who at one point had begun to treat her as an equal, repented to her (at their new pastor’s prodding) for placing too many burdens on her shoulders, and had proceeded, through his deeper involvement in their church, to become more and more clueless. He didn’t understand her silent outrage at having to listen to Sallie, whose haphazard housekeeping drove Rachel nuts, or her resentment towards the church and its various ministries.
    Her father had turned to the church for support in his time of bereavement, and now seemed to be caught in its stranglehold. Everything in the family schedule revolved around church groups, share groups, youth groups, men’s groups, and women’s groups. Church annual retreats had become more important than Christmas and Easter, it seemed. But Rachel could see how much comfort and happiness her father and his wife derived from the church and their church family.  She didn’t dare suggest they leave or pull back. Who was she, she thought dismally, to wreck the happiness of so many people?
    So she was finding her own version of happiness, in different places. Yes, what I need, she thought, is a dress . A sleek black dress, not too formal, not too casual. And black sandals, with thin straps . There was nothing in her wardrobe—or her sisters’—or