He stared at the exterior of Winters Dance Studio with its fresh coat of white paint and huge flowering rosebushes, and thought about what the hell he was doing here. The last place he belonged was somewhere like this, even if he had no intention of dancing. The building was midcentury, but not in that 1950s plastic sense. It had been built with sturdy grace, almost like a church among the redwoods. The trees provided some shade, although there weren’t as many around the studio as there were farther up the road, where the tail end of town became the coastal mountains and forest again. He hadn’t ventured out that far and wasn’t sure he would. Chico liked the trees, but he liked having houses nearby too. If he walked back the way he’d just come, but stuck to the road, he’d end up in the main part of the little town known as Brandywine. But to be honest, that sounded about as exhausting as spending his free time volunteering, or whatever, at Winters Dance Studio. The studio was larger than some of the other buildings in town.
