The black and white photograph lay on the floor where I’d be sure to find it and showed Aida in her twenties when she’d already become a New York City Ballet sensation. I’d unlocked the front door to her closed-up house, stale air rushing at me like an elderly guard dog. She’d given me the key a few days after settling in at the assisted living facility and told me she’d changed all the locks in her house. 

            “Hang on to that. It’s the only legal way to get in now,” she said.

            I smiled, amused to be in on her secret, but unaware of its significance. She’d left explicit instructions in her will that I was to be the first person to enter the house after her death, and the will stipulated I was to go there alone. 

            The photo of Aida taken at the height of her career brought back the depth of my loss. Aida was at least thirty years my senior, but we’d become close friends, and I’d grown to love her much like a favorite aunt. We’d met at a dance recital for the students in my ballet school. I’d recognized her immediately though it had been years since she’d performed and her career had extended well into her fifties. She’d starred in most well-loved ballets and also in the society columns that speculated about her marriage to a man twenty years her senior, her two children, and the idyllic summers she spent on their Rhode Island estate. She’d only returned to her childhood home here in Boston after her husband died, frequenting local dance performances as an honored guest.                          

      I turned the photo over, looking for a date, and saw the handwritten note: “Your key unlocks the door to the attic. Look in the dollhouse.”

            I’d never been in the attic and didn’t relish going there now. I imagined a dark space redolent of mouse droppings in a windowless room filled with cobwebs. What had compelled her to reveal some-carefully guarded secret only after her death? And why reveal it to me? Why not her son or daughter? I sat on the steps leading to the second and third floors, probably the attic as well, and gathered my courage. Then I went to the kitchen to search the pantry for a flashlight.

            The third floor under the gabled roof housed a servant’s quarters. The door had been left open, and I entered to find the door to the attic at the back of the room. The key fit neatly into the lock. I held my breath and pulled the door open. The attic had steeply sloping sides with a large window at the far end that streamed in sunlight. An array of  dusty boxes and trunks filled most of the space, but a path had been left to the window. A wooden chair with a torn leather seat sat next to it with several pairs of used ballet slippers slung over the back. Someone had attached tags to the laces of each pair. “Swan Lake,” one read. “Giselle.” “Sleeping Beauty.” All ballets Aida had danced as principle ballerina. I hadn’t been old enough to see her perform those dances during the height of her career and wondered if I might find recordings of them on YouTube to share with my students.                                  

            I blew out a breath and switched on the flashlight, shining it into the dark corners and found the dollhouse under an old quilt not far from the chair with the ballet slippers. I sat down beside it, realizing it was a replica of Aida’s house. 

            Inside were finely made pieces of dollhouse furniture, Oriental rugs the size of napkins, and a variety of other miniature furnishings. An hour into my hunt with no results and feeling at a loss as to what I was even looking for, I thought back to our last visit here in her house and remembered sitting in the dining room working one of the puzzles she loved—intricate jigsaw puzzles she bought from a company that specialized in making them difficult.

I looked again to the dollhouse dining room, half expecting to see a miniature jigsaw puzzle spread out on the tiny dining table, but it revealed nothing. 

            My luck changed when I found the folded piece of paper the size of a playing card taped to the back of the china cabinet. Aida’s name was printed across the top of the paper I unfolded that showed a date from a few years back. A doctor’s name was circled in red. It looked like a lab report.

            I tucked the document in my pocket, locked up the attic and left the house feeling more mystified than I’d been before I arrived. Of all the puzzles I’d enjoyed working with Aida, this was the strangest.

            That night she appeared to me in a dream looking as she had the last time I’d seen her, white hair drawn into a ballerina’s knot, eyes clear and direct.

            “Find the doctor,” she said in my dream.

###

             “I’ve been wondering if you would show up,” Dr. Morgan said.  “Aida’s instructions were quite clear that I was not to approach you.” 

            “What’s this about?” I asked. “Why all the cloak and dagger? Aida and I were close—she could have told me anything.”

            “There’s a lot at stake here,” she said. “I guess she felt a need for you to pass one final test.”

            “A test? For what?” 

             It had never even occurred to me that I was being tested, and I began to doubt the nature of our friendship.

            “I can reveal what this is about later. The next step is for you to take a blood test.”

            “A blood test?” I stood up. “This is crazy. I’m not taking a blood test or any other stupid test. Aida must have developed dementia before she died.”

            Dr. Morgan opened the middle drawer of her desk and withdrew a sealed, note-sized envelope and handed it to me. “She told me you might have that reaction and asked me to give you this. You can read it here or take it home and call me later after you’ve read it.”

            I gave Dr. Morgan a strange look, accepted the envelope with my name written across it in Aida’s handwriting and headed for the door.

            Several days passed before I read the note. Afterward, I called Dr. Morgan and agreed to take the blood test. Sitting outside her office now, waiting for the test results, I thought of how my life might change. There was a good chance it wouldn’t change at all. I’d continue running my dance school and building an audience for classical ballet. And that would be fine. But what if the test results were positive?  

            Dr. Morgan opened the door and motioned me into her office. I sat on the edge of my chair as she opened a file folder on her desk. 

            “As Aida suspected, the two blood tests revealed a DNA a match. Looks like you are, indeed, the daughter of a famous ballerina, the child Aida birthed and gave up for adoption. 

            I stared at the doctor. “Why didn’t she keep me like her other children?”

            “You were the result of a brief affair she had while on an international tour. For what it’s worth, your father was also an extraordinary dancer, a Russian. When Aida’s husband found out, giving you up was the agreement they were able to reach rather than end the marriage. But Aida always regretted it. Finding you and including you in her estate was Aida’s most consuming final wish.”