A Time to Dance/A Time to Embrace by Karen Kingsbury

his hands together behind his head and closing his eyes. Forget the tests. The only way to figure out how things had gotten so complicated was to go back to the fall of 1993, the year Charlene was hired to teach at Marion High. The same year things between Abby and him went from fun-loving and unforgettable to busy and stressful.
    Nicole had turned thirteen that year, and every hour the girl spent at the junior high seemed to require another two hours of Abby’s time to sort through Nicole’s problems and help her understand the pains of growing up. And of course there were the sports activities. That year Kade was ten and building a name for himself in youth football leagues around Southern Illinois. When there wasn’t football there was baseball or basketball.
    Abby always seemed to be driving Kade one place or another, and Nicole was just as busy. She needed to get to youth group and swimming lessons and piano recitals and soccer games. On top of everything else, there was Abby’s father. The man lived alone, but he’d lost much of his independence since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He’d sold the old house in Wisconsin in 1993, along with much of his furniture, then packed up his few belongings and moved to a retirement home ten minutes from John and Abby’s. So in addition to the kids’ schedules, Abby took time to stop in and see her dad several times a week. Where once he and Abby had spent Sunday afternoons watching fall football, that year she spent those hours with her father.
    Most of the time Abby was so busy she’d drive three-year-old Sean over to the weightroom at Marion High and leave him with John so she could attempt the insurmountable schedule of the day.
    It was so different from those early years, back when the children were young and the only thing on Abby’s agenda each afternoon had been getting the kids down to the high school so they could run around the grassy hills and watch the Marion Eagles’ football practice. By the fall of ’93, not only was Abby too busy to watch his team practice, she was no longer interested: “It’s the same thing, year after year . . . Besides, it’s too cold out there on the hillside.”
    He could hear her excuses and even now, years later, they still hurt. In the early days she couldn’t wait to hear who went out for the team and who made it. She’d pepper him with questions about players and strategies and upcoming games until long after practice was over.
    Those were the days.
    John opened his eyes and reached for his water bottle, taking three long swigs before setting it back down and staring hard again at the family photo. Why had she changed? Did football lose its appeal somehow? Or was it him she’d grown tired of? Either way by the time Charlene started teaching at Marion, life at the Reynolds house was little more than a functional blur. At least four out of five nights, John and Abby would see each other only when they met back at the house long after dark to grab a quick meal before putting the kids in bed.
    Late evenings—a time Abby and John once had reserved for each other—became the only opportunity to clean dishes or fold laundry or for Abby to edit a magazine piece due the next day. Each season they told themselves things would get slower, they were bound to get slower.
    But they only got busier. And the busier they got, the more lonely life felt.
    John remembered the in-service training three days before school started in 1993, when Charlene came up and introduced herself to him. She had been twenty-five then, young and fresh and bound to catch the attention of hundreds of high-school boys. John had heard about her from one of the other coaches, but even their praise hadn’t prepared him for the impact she made in person.
    “Hi, I’m Charlene Denton. You must be Coach Reynolds.” She held out her hand and he took it, taken aback by her directness.
    “I guess I just look like a Coach Reynolds . . .” He grinned