Excruciatingly aware of the glance with which he swept her leotarded frame, she retreated behind her desk and sat, all the while bemoaning her uncharacteristic lapse in professional appearance and demeanor. Ordinarily, given her lack of physical stature and—to her—terminally cute blondness, to establish credibility she always strove to dress and conduct herself with reserved dignity during first meetings such as this.
Very much afraid that in this case she had totally blown it, she tried to regain some lost ground with a cool smile and a hand gesture that silently invited her visitor to sit, as well.
He didn’t. Instead he disconcerted her anew by ambling over to the pegboard wall to study her displayed diplomas. Well, let him, she thought, trying for unconcern. She had, after all, graduated with honors. And anyway, this meeting was about him, not her.
“Mr. Parker.” Hally tightly folded her hands on the desk. Her posture was as erect as ever her mother could have wished it to be. “I’m afraid I have another appointment in a few minutes, so I’ll come straight to the point. Your daughter Corinne…”
“Is lucky to have you for a teacher,” her visitor disarmed her by interrupting. “If your credentials are anything to go by.” He went to the chair and sat.
Not sure how to reply to this double-edged compliment, Hally looked down at her folded hands. Noting whiteknuckled tension there, she willed herself to relax. She decided to forego a reply and to stick to the subject at hand.
“Corinne is a very troubled young woman,” she said. She forced herself to levelly meet the man’s eyes and was momentarily thrown off guard by the flicker of pain her words seemed to cause. It was masked so quickly by an expression of wary neutrality, however, that she decided she’d only imagined it in the first place.
Certainly his tone revealed nothing but skepticism as he said, “Isn’t two weeks a bit soon to make that kind of sweeping assessment, Ms. McKenzie? After all, Cory is not only new to Ben Franklin High, being a freshman, but new to Long Beach, too. We only moved here a month ago.
“I understand that,” Hally said. “And believe me, I’m not the kind of teacher or counselor whose first course of action is a complaint to the student’s parents.”
“I have only your word for that, though, don’t I?”
“No, Mr. Parker, you can check with the principal, too.” Hally kept her tone pleasant but firm. Parker’s bristling defensiveness, identical to every other parent’s reaction to criticism of their child, was exactly what she’d needed to relax and regain a professional perspective. This was familiar ground and she trod upon it with confidence. “I’ve taught here at Ben Franklin for seven years—”
“This isn’t about teaching, though, is it?” Michael Parker injected stiffly. “It’s about you psychoanalyzing a student you barely know and—”
“Mr. Parker,” Hally interrupted. She was not about to let him put her back on the defensive. “Quite aside from the fact that I do have a degree in psychology—”
“A bachelor degree,” Mike Parker said dismissively. “With all due respect, Ms. McKenzie, they’re a dime a dozen.”
“Nevertheless.” In spite of her resolve to remain unruffled, Hally began to seethe with resentment but didn’t bother to point out to the man what he already knew very well from looking at her diplomas—namely her Masters in English. “I have taught school for seven years and I don’t need to be a therapist to know that Corinne is having emotional problems beyond those related to a new environment”
Leaning forward, she drove home her point. “Are you aware, Mr. Parker, that out of the nine days school has been in session, your daughter has been absent four and tardy the rest?”
“Impossible.” Betraying emotion at last, Parker surged to his feet. “I personally drop her at the front steps of this school every morning. Let me see this.”
Hally reflexively shrank back as he reached across the desk and snatched up Corinne’s file. But though she had tensed to object to his high-handedness, she took a deep breath instead and held her tongue.
Let him see for himself the lengths to which a child will go to defy an overly controlling parent, she thought snidely.
And was ashamed of her pettiness the moment she saw the betrayed and thunderstruck expression with which the girl’s father thumbed through the ream of obviously forged handwritten excuses in the file.
After several minutes of heavy silence, he muttered something harsh and succinct. He tossed the folder down on her desk. He turned away from Hally’s gaze, one hand rubbing his mouth, the other clamped to the back of his neck. After a moment he dropped both hands with an audible sigh and the set of his shoulders lost some of its starch.
“I’m sorry,” he said, flicking Hally a dark, sideways glance that, combined with the emotion-rough timbre of his voice, shook her up a lot more than it had any right to. “I had no idea….”
“I understand.” Hally felt oddly self-conscious suddenly in the presence of this man’s bewilderment and hurt, as if she’d trespassed on some private moment of grief. She felt bad, too, about her initial snap judgment of him. The unsettling resemblance she thought she had discerned between him and her father had long since been dispelled. She knew now that they were nothing alike. Mike Parker, whatever else he might or might not be, cared about this daughter. Whereas James McKenzie….
Well. Hally shook off the disturbing comparisons. Who knew? Feebly, she gestured to the phony excuses in the file. “Could anyone else have written these? A grandmother, or—”
“No.” Mike Parker went to his chair and heavily dropped into it. With his elbows propped on spread knees he bent his head and, his features taut with strain, stared fixedly at the fisted hand he cradled in his other.
Because they were extremely large hands, Hally stared at them, too. Raw-boned farmer’s hands, they struck her as incongruous, sticking out as they did from the sleeves of an unmistakably hand-tailored suit. And they presented another difference between this man and her father whose hands were graceful and slim—the hands of a surgeon.
“Cory and I are alone, Ms. McKenzie.”
“Yes…” It was in the file, of course. She glanced at his face. It was shuttered, devoid of emotion. Still, Hally’s marshmallow heart went out to him even as her mind, after a quick glance at the clock, registered the fact she’d have to cut this conference short right now if she hoped to make her aerobics class on time.
But, of course, she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. They hadn’t resolved anything yet. She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” His glance acknowledged her sympathy, but his tone made it clear he wouldn’t welcome pity, in case that was offered, too.
It wouldn’t have been. Mostly because Michael John Parker looked too tough in spite of his polish to be in need of it, or welcome it. His nose had clearly been broken at some point in his past and never been properly set, giving him the kind of face—interesting rather than handsome—that would draw second glances from men as well as from women. Second glances…but very little empathy.
Yet, Hally, though she fought against it, was filled with it. She’d always been a bleeding heart. “How long since…”
“A year.” He spoke curtly, still staring at his hands. It was obvious he didn’t relish her questions and resented the necessity to answer them.
Hally sighed and stifled a need to apologize. After all, she wasn’t idly prying, she was doing her job. Unfortunately for Michael Parker, it required that they communicate beyond the customary impersonal chitchat of strangers.
“Corinne