Page 3 of Dancing on Air

That first night home, however, when she was hiding away in her room watching videos of dancers that she followed online, she heard yelling.

She quietly cracked open her door and listened to her parents fight for what seemed like the first time in her life.

They were arguing about JT. Apparently, her father had called him and asked him for money, which had pissed her mother off. She was about to shut the door and go back to watching her videos when she heard her parents leave the house.

Almost two hours later, her father returned home without her mother. He claimed she’d needed to take a break and was staying with a friend.

She vaguely wondered if he’d committed her again, because her mother didn’t have any friends.

But the following morning, Cora called Twin Valley, and they assured her that her mother wasn’t there.

When she confronted her father, he grew angry and shoved her back into her room and locked the door, like she was a child.

Two days later, Cora had enough of her father skirting her questions. She was growing super afraid of him and just needed to get out of that house. She packed her bags and snuck out in the middle of the night, determined to get either answers or help in finding out what had happened to her mother. Since she didn’t have a car, she hitchhiked to the small town of Silver Creek, where her half-family lived.

She kept telling herself that she just wanted to talk to her brother and see if he knew anything about her mother’s whereabouts. And to see why he wouldn’t help their dad financially. After all, it appeared he was super wealthy.

Over the years, she’d earned some money by dancing and had stuck it in a savings account. She had originally done it to save money to purchase toe shoes, but the school had provided them to her and she hadn’t touched the money at all.

If she had more money of her own, she would have moved out long ago. Moved closer to the school so she didn’t have to return at all.

After all, she was eighteen and an adult. But she didn’t have enough money, nor did she have a job or a car. After her aunt’s death, a trust had been set up for Cora’s schooling, but that money was almost completely drained.

That was another reason why Cora hadn’t moved to New York yet. The cost.

What was going to happen to her now? Would Paul keep paying for her life now that her mother wasn’t there to encourage him to do so?

Jerry Thomas, aka JT Whistler, lived on a private island off the coast of Maine.

She’d never been to Maine before, but at this time of year, it was a lot like Ohio, with the exception of the ocean. She’d never seen the ocean.

At first, she struggled to figure out how to get out to his island. She asked a few people in town about it and each of them seemed eager to tell her where it was. None of them explained how to get out there though.

So she’d borrowed a rowboat that had been tied up to a dock and had spent more than an hour rowing out to the secluded island in the dark. Thanks to her phone’s GPS, she’d only gotten lost once.

Thankfully, it appeared he wasn’t home at the moment she arrived.

When she stepped off the dock with her backpack, she was so consumed with scanning the area, and so worried about getting yelled at by someone, that she forgot to tie the small rowboat. By the time she noticed, it was so far out in the water, there was no way she could get it back.

She’d come this far, why not go all in, she thought. She started exploring the island.

There were cobblestone pathways leading from the boathouse and dock area up to the classic New England–style home. It appeared some of the home was still under construction, and she was worried he’d have security cameras, so she steered clear as much as she could.

If he wasn’t home, she didn’t want some security firm showing up and hauling her away.

The island seemed to be around five acres of land. There were a few small buildings, including one that sat at the top of a hill at the highest point of the island. It was made of glass and appeared to be brand new.

There was a stone fountain in the middle of the pathway that had flowers around it.

This was as close to paradise as she could have ever imagined.

That first night, after fairy lights flickered on, apparently on some sort of timer, she’d slept in the boathouse in a sleeping bag she’d packed with her.

It was cozy enough and the sound of the water soothed her. She had just enough food with her that she didn’t feel afraid of going hungry. There were a couple of water spigots on the boathouse, so she had fresh water.

Since she had the island all to herself, she spent her time exploring. She had spotted the security cameras easily enough after dark, as they had bright red blinking lights, and had avoided them.

Then, on the second night there, she heard a dog barking. Fear licked at her, and she quickly climbed the nearest tree to hide from it.