For the first time, he understood why I’d been worried.
He looked at Audrey.
“Sweetheart, I never agreed that you should quit ballet.”
She stared at
him.
“Really?”
“Of course not.”
Her eyes filled.
Scott pulled her into a hug.
Then he looked at me.
“We need to talk to Derek.”
I nodded.
“But Audrey needs to be heard too.”
Scott agreed.
He called his oldest friend and asked him to come over with Laura.
When Derek arrived, he looked annoyed.
“What’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait?”
I placed Audrey’s messages on the dining table.
“Can you explain these?”
***NEXT PAGE
Derek glanced down.
His expression changed.
Laura picked up the phone and began reading.
Then she looked toward her husband.
“Derek, why would you send these to Audrey?”
He shifted in his chair.
“She misunderstood. I was trying to manage her expectations.”
Audrey spoke quietly from beside me.
“You told me Mom thought I was embarrassing myself.”
Derek turned toward her.
“Sweetheart, you were taking things too seriously.”
I interrupted.
“Please don’t dismiss her.”
Laura looked at him carefully.
Then she asked a question none of us had considered.
“Derek, is this because Mia didn’t get into the advanced program?”
The room fell silent.
I looked at Laura.
Then at Derek.
He rubbed his forehead.
“Mia worked just as hard,” he said finally.
Laura stared at him.
“What does that have to do with Audrey?”
He looked down.
“Every time Audrey came home excited about that program, I thought about how upset Mia was after being rejected.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Mia was Derek and Laura’s daughter.
She’d applied to the same advanced program but hadn’t been accepted.
She was Audrey’s friend.
And apparently, Derek had been struggling with the fact that Audrey had earned an opportunity Mia hadn’t.
Scott leaned forward.
“So you convinced our daughter that we wanted her to quit?”
Derek shook his head.
“I wasn’t trying to
hurt her.”
“But you did,” Scott answered.
Laura’s expression was filled with disbelief.
“You made Audrey doubt herself because you were disappointed for Mia?”
Derek said nothing.
I looked toward my daughter.
***NEXT PAGE
She was sitting very still.
For weeks, she’d believed we were ashamed of her.
Now she was hearing that the story had come from someone else’s jealousy.
