and encouraging Audrey every day.
Then I found my daughter sitting alone near a vending machine.
When I asked why she’d stopped dancing, she looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“Because Derek told me you and Dad were embarrassed by me. He said you wanted me to quit, but you were too ashamed to tell me yourself.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
Derek was my husband’s oldest friend.
The man we’d trusted to drive our daughter safely to lessons.
And I was about to discover that he had been using those car rides to convince Audrey that her own parents no longer believed in her.
***NEXT PAGE
My daughter Audrey had loved ballet for as long as I could remember.
Even when she was little, she couldn’t seem to walk across a room without turning it into some kind of dance.
