“So they weren’t going to expose your secret or anything?”

“They wouldn’t do that.”

“Can you tell me yours?”

“I can’t.”

“Please. I won’t tell a soul.”

There’d been a moment’s pause. Maggie’d looked around. “I guess. You won’t tell anybody?”

“Promise.”

Whispering: “I don’t like Justin Bieber. He’s not cute and I don’t like what he does onstage.”

Dance had waited. Then: “That’s it? That’s your secret?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why don’t you want to sing, honey?”

Her eyes had clouded with tears again. “Because I’m afraid this terrible thing’s going to happen. It’ll be, you know, the worst. I’ll be up there in front of everybody.”

“What?”

“You know, you were telling me about our bodies and when you get older things happen?”

My God, she was worried she’d get her period onstage. Dance was about to bring up the subject when Maggie said, “Billy Truesdale.”

“Billy. He’s in your class, right?”

A nod. “He’s my age.”

Dance recalled their birthdays were about the same time of year. She took out a tissue and dried her daughter’s eyes.

“What about him?”

“Okay,” the girl had said, sniffling. “He was singing last month, in assembly. He was really good and he was singing the national anthem. But then…but then when he sang a high note, something happened, and his voice got all weird and it, like, cracked. And he couldn’t sing anymore. Everybody laughed at him. He ran out of the auditorium, crying, and afterward I heard somebody say it was because of his age. His voice was changing.” She choked. “I’m, like, the same age. It’s going to happen to me. I know it. I’ll go out onstage and, you know that note in the song, the high note, I know it’ll happen!”

Dance had clamped her teeth together and inhaled hard through her nose to keep the smile from blossoming on her face. And she’d reflected on one of the basic aspects of parenting: You think you’ve figured out every possible permutation and plan accordingly. And you still get slammed from out of the blue.

Dance had wiped the girl’s tears once again, then hugged her daughter. “Mags, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

MONDAY, APRIL 10

The Blood of All

Chapter 73

Dance awoke early and surveyed the aftermath of the Secrets Club pajama party, which she’d hosted after the show.

The living room was not bad for a gaggle of ten- and eleven-year-old girls. Pizza crusts on most of the tables, popcorn on the floor, glitter from who knew what makeup experiment, some nail polish where it shouldn’t be, clothes scattered everywhere from an impromptu fashion show.

Could’ve been a lot worse.

Arriving at the house last night, Maggie had been pure celeb, red-carpet celeb. Whatever other clubs were part of the social structure of Pacific Heights, the Secrets Sisters ruled.

And, Dance had been pleased to learn (one of the reasons for the pizza and pajama party at her place), the girls were all quite nice. Yes, Bethany would probably someday be an inside-the-Beltway force that no one would want to argue with from across the aisle. Heaven help Leigh’s husband. And Cara could write code that impressed even Jon Boling. But the girls were uniformly polite, generous, funny.