That night, after Audrey went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop.
I opened the Westbrook Academy parent portal. I found the authorized pickup list. I removed Derek Malone’s name and submitted a new form listing only Scott and me. I emailed the front office to confirm it in writing.
Then I emailed the attendance office at Audrey’s high school and asked them to remove Derek from her emergency contacts immediately.
Then I logged into my email and dragged every message from Westbrook out of my spam folder. I created a filter so nothing from that studio would ever go to spam again.
It was past midnight when Scott came and sat down next to me.
“I should have listened to you,” he said quietly. “When you said something was wrong. I should have called him that night.”
“You trusted him,” I said. “So did I. I wrote his name on the pickup form myself.”
“Thirty years, Nic,” he said. His voice cracked. “I’ve known that man for thirty years.”
Derek showed up the next evening at 6:10 with his wife, Laura. He walked in looking annoyed, like we’d dragged him away from something important.
“This couldn’t have waited?” he said. “It’s Friday night.”
Laura looked confused. She kept glancing at Scott’s face.
We sat at the dining room table. I laid out printed screenshots of Derek’s text messages, one by one, in front of Laura.
She picked them up. She read them slowly. Her face went pale.
“Derek,” she said. “Why are you sending these to Audrey?”
“Audrey misunderstood,” Derek said, leaning back in his chair. “I was just trying to manage her expectations. That program is intense. I didn’t want her getting crushed.”
Audrey spoke from beside me. Her voice was shaking, but she didn’t look away from him.
“You told me Mom thought I was embarrassing myself.”
Derek shifted in his chair.
“Sweetheart, you were just taking everything way too seriously.”
“Don’t call her sweetheart,” I said.
The room went silent.
Laura set the papers down on the table. She turned to look at her husband.
“Is this because Mia didn’t get in?” she asked quietly.
Nobody answered.
“Derek?” Scott said.
Derek rubbed his forehead with both hands. For a long time, he didn’t say anything at all.
“Mia worked just as hard,” he finally said. His voice was rough. “She practiced every day for a year. She came home from that audition and cried in her room for three days. And Audrey got everything. The spot. The scholarship. All of it.”
He stared down at the table.
“Every time Audrey got in my car talking about that program, all I could think about was Mia crying on her bedroom floor.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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