Chapter 3 - THE CALL THAT CAME NEXT
Vanessa called before breakfast the next morning.
I let it go to voicemail the first two times. On the third, Mark answered because he still believed, stupidly, that his sister might be calling to congratulate Lily.
She wasn’t.
“Tell your wife to stop using my studio’s choreography to embarrass me online,” Vanessa snapped so loudly I could hear her from across the kitchen.
Mark put the phone on speaker.
“Lily danced her own solo,” he said.
“She danced material developed under my instruction. If she continues to nationals, I can report the piece.”
Lily, who had been rinsing her cereal bowl, went motionless.
“You cut her three days before the showcase,” I said. “You do not own her hard work.”
Vanessa laughed once, short and ugly.
“This is exactly why family and business do not mix.”
“No,” I said. “This is what happens when you humiliate a child in public.”
Her voice cooled immediately.
“You have no idea what you’re getting into, Claire.”
She hung up.
By lunchtime, a mother from Hartline texted me privately:
I’m sorry about Lily. People are talking.
An hour later, another message came from an unknown number.
Vanessa lied. Don’t answer her again until we talk. — Tessa
Tessa Doyle was one of Hartline’s assistant teachers.
She asked to meet that night at a coffee shop in Upper Arlington, away from the studio and away from other parents.
I left Lily with Mark and drove there alone.
Tessa was already waiting, twisting a paper sleeve around her coffee cup.
“I can’t stay long,” she said. “If Vanessa finds out, I’ll lose my job.”
“Then why are you here?”
Tessa looked me straight in the eye.
“Because Lily was not cut for being weak.”
My stomach tightened.
“Then why?”
Tessa took a folded sheet from her tote bag and slid it across the table.
It was a copy of the internal showcase audition scores.
May you like
Three columns. Three judges.
Lily’s name was at the top.
