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Cara didn’t look up. She sat there, erasing furiously, then writing again, just as intensely. She didn’t seem maladjusted to him. Just focused. Most parents with kids her age could only be so lucky to have a girl who would sit there quietly and do her work without a peep of complaint.
Still... Brent watched her with worry, her shining blonde hair tied perennially into pigtails on either side of her head, her shoes swinging back and forth in the chair as she worked. He would give her everything in the world. Anything that was humanly possible to give her. Regardless, the idea of introducing someone into her life who was only there because they were paid to spend time with Cara was repellent to Brent.
***
The problem irked Brent all week. He mulled it over, chewing over every possible consequence or benefit that might come from this new person’s contact with Cara. He’d even made the error of complaining about Ms. Ramirez’s judgments to his father at their standing Wednesday night dinner.
This, of course, only resulted in his father telling him, yet again, that he needed to get remarried to a proper woman and hand the job of Cara over to her, as though a wife were simply someone hired on to babysit the children while a man was at work. Annoyed, Brent reiterated that marrying a woman with an ulterior motive like that would be worse than not having a wife at all.
It did no good, of course. His father was impervious to logic or even scientific data. Especially scientific data. Brent had once tried to bring him articles attesting to the fact that children would fare worse under the care of parents who fought constantly or couldn’t demonstrate a healthy, loving relationship than they did under the care of a single parent. His father could always turn any argument around, dismiss any source, ignore any point made. He was slippery as hell and would never be caught admitting he was wrong.
Admitting fault was weakness to Donald K. Sanderson.
The man had never brooked weakness in Brent, certainly. Or anyone else around him. Brent had, at one point, tried to convince himself that this stemmed from his father’s time in the Navy, but percentage-wise, the man had spent more of his life in communications technology building a damn fortune to hold over Brent’s head.
Truthfully, Brent suspected that the old man just liked controlling people.
The following day, Brent found thoughts of nannies and unsubtle fatherly puppeteering driven out of his head by schedules and contracts and all of the other issues demanding his attention from his independent movie studio. They had several movies they were juggling at the moment, some of which they expected might do well at Sundance and Cannes.
Brent kicked back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk as he started skimming through the second pass on a script one of the agents had secured for them. It had merit, but the characters on the first run hadn’t been nearly clear enough in their motivations. He had just started making notations when his assistant, Mona, popped her head in and told him that the school had called.
He straightened up and motioned for her to hand him the phone. “This is Brent Sanderson. To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Principal Davenport. I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to come pick up your daughter.”
“I’m sorry, what? What happened?”
“I can explain when you get here—”
“I’m at work, at a company that I run,” Brent said in a firm but smooth tone. “It isn’t optional for me to be here. We have projects that need to be done today, some that need to be sent out in less than an hour. I would consider it a professional favor if you could tell me directly why you’re sending my daughter home for the day.”
Davenport hesitated, but eventually said, “Cara had a bit of a problem with a couple of other girls in the bathroom in between classes.”
“I find it incredibly difficult to believe that Cara would start a fight. Are you bringing in the other girls’ parents?”
“We are looking into it, Mr. Sanderson, but it wasn’t really a fight.” Davenport paused. “Another girl apparently grabbed her pigtails and cut them off. We’re not sure who is responsible yet – since, of course, Cara couldn’t see them, and there were multiple grades out at that time. Still, she’s very upset, and I think it would be best for her to take the rest of the day off.”
Brent felt his heart pounding so forcefully that he thought it would jump out of his chest. “Let me get this straight: you called to tell me that you failed to prevent my daughter from being assaulted?”
“I wouldn’t go that far—”
“Trust that I know the law, Mr. Davenport. And trust that you and I are definitely going to schedule a meeting about how you and the teachers are handling the situation with my daughter,” Brent said sternly.
