Almost An Angel
Authors: Judith Arnold
ALMOST AN ANGEL
The Daddy School
Judith Arnold
“Judith Arnold writes beautifully and poignantly. Highly recommended!” Romance Readers Anonymous
Copyright © 2013 by Barbara Keiler
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
THE CALL CAME during a meeting, interrupting Conor in mid-sentence. Three engineers and his VP of marketing were seated around the table in GateKeepers’ conference room, and the technology officer of a West Coast software firm appeared on a monitor at one end of the table, courtesy of Skype. Conor had been elaborating on the features of GateKeepers’ network security software to the West Coast guy when the phone at his elbow dinged.
He muttered an impatient “Excuse me,” and lifted the handset. “Yeah?”
“Amy’s school is on the line,” Marion reported.
His daughter’s school? Not good. He thanked Marion, then sent an apologetic look to his colleagues and the disembodied head on the screen at the opposite end of the table from him. “Sorry, people. I’ve got to take this.” He stood, asked his VP to explain more of the software’s selling points to the West Coast guy, and slipped out of the room, the phone’s cordless handset clenched in his fist.
He shut the door before pressing the button to connect the call. Taking a steadying breath, he forced some optimism into his voice before saying, “Conor Malone here.”
“Hello.” A woman’s voice, smooth as satin. “This is Eliza Powell, the school psychologist. I just had Amy in my office.”
Conor didn’t recognize the woman’s name. Where was Rosalyn Hoffman, the wonderful school shrink who’d gotten Amy through so much trauma last year?
No matter. Whoever this new shrink was, if Amy had been sent to her office, it was definitely not good. “What happened?”
“It seems she punched another student.”
“Punched?” he blurted out, then glanced around him. He had the hallway to himself, but the software team in the main room could have heard him if they’d wanted to. Most of them were so absorbed in their work, lobbing ideas back and forth like ping-pong balls, that they probably weren’t even aware of their boss standing just a few feet away, receiving unwelcome news. Even so, he lowered his voice when he said, “How could she punch someone? She’s a little girl.”
“As I understand it, the boy she punched—”
“She punched a
boy
?”
“—is two inches taller than her and outweighs her by twenty-five pounds. He isn’t hurt. If he was, she would have been sent to the principal’s office for disciplinary action, not to me.”
“I’m sorry—who are you again?”
“Eliza Powell. The school psychologist.”
“What happened to Dr. Hoffman?”
“She retired.”
Damn. He’d liked Dr. Hoffman. More important, Amy had liked her. And trusted her. Dr. Hoffman had helped Amy endure a trauma no third-grade girl should ever have had to experience.
Amy was in fourth grade now. Apparently she still needed help. “My daughter punched a boy,” he muttered.
“She said he was making fun of her.”
Then the bastard deserved whatever Amy had done to him, Conor thought, his protective-dad reflexes kicking in. “Look, Ms.—Dr.—Pollack—”
“Powell,” she corrected him.
“I’m sorry. Dr. Powell. Amy’s been through a lot in the past year. If her classmates are making fun of her—”
“According to Amy, the boy told her she was stupid for believing in Santa Claus. She said he called her an idiot, among other things.”
“So she punched him.” Conor knew he ought to be angry with his daughter. He supposed he’d have to give her a stern lecture that evening. But hell—a boy had called her an idiot for believing in Santa. If Conor had been there, he might have been tempted to slug the kid himself.
“Amy seems to believe,” Dr. Powell continued, “that her mother is Santa’s angel, and that Santa is going to bring her mother to her this year for Christmas. I’m new here at the Adams
School, Mr. Malone, but I’ve read Amy’s file. I’m not sure where she got the idea that Santa was going to bring her mother back to her, but if she truly believes that, she’s going to be in for a huge disappointment Christmas morning.”
Conor knew where she’d gotten the idea: from his parents last week at Thanksgiving. He and Amy had traveled to Maine for the holiday, and Amy had been anxious and weepy, worrying about how she was going to survive another Christmas without her mother. Last year had been a horror, Sheila’s death still so fresh in his and Amy’s hearts that they hadn’t celebrated Christmas at all. This year he was determined that his daughter would rediscover the joy of the holiday.
But she’d been moody and fretful last week, bursting into tears at the slightest provocation, until her grandmother had come up with the bizarre idea of assuring Amy that Sheila was Santa’s special angel. When Amy had asked whether Santa would give her her mother for Christmas, Conor’s mother had said yes. When Amy had asked her grandfather for confirmation, he’d loyally backed up his wife.
The lie had made for a much happier Thanksgiving. But now Conor was stuck dealing with the aftermath.
“All right,” he said, remembering that he was supposed to be in the conference room, participating in an important meeting. “What happens next? Is the boy planning to press charges? Do I have to hire a lawyer?”
“No. The boy was sent the principal’s office and treated to a discussion about exercising sensitivity toward others. Amy was sent to my office because…”
“Because her mother died a year ago and the school is handling her with kid gloves,” Conor guessed.
The school psychologist hesitated before saying, “I think she deserves kid-glove treatment, don’t you?”
Yes and no. His daughter had suffered a loss no child should ever experience. But she couldn’t go around punching people just because they’d insulted her.
“I think Amy would benefit from some more therapy,” the psychologist continued. “This is going to be a rough season for her, especially if she believes Santa is going to bring her mother down the chimney and leave her under the tree. I’d be happy to meet with her. If you’d rather she continue with Rosalyn Hoffman, I believe she’s working part-time in a private group practice. Your insurance might cover it.”
“Right.” Damn. Insurance, therapy, shrinks… Conor believed he and Amy had made genuine progress over the past year. They were functioning. Their home was running smoothly. Amy was doing well in school—when she wasn’t punching her classmates—and she was flourishing in the after-school program he’d enrolled her in at the YMCA. He really, really didn’t want to go back to where they’d been in the first months after the accident.
But she was his daughter. His motherless daughter. If she needed more therapy, she’d get it. With Dr. Hoffman or with this new school shrink: Potter, Powers…
Powell
. If Dr. Powell could make Amy happy—without spoon-feeding her troublesome lies—Conor would be grateful.
“Where is Amy now?” he asked.
“Back in her classroom. Linda Rodriguez says things are under control,” she added, naming Amy’s teacher.
“Does the school want to meet with me?”
“That’s your call. If you’d like to schedule a session with me—with or without Amy—we can do that. If you’d rather work with Rosalyn Hoffman, I’ll email you the phone number at her new practice. We have your email address on file.”
They certainly did. Last year, when the pain of Sheila’s death had been so raw, the school had been in constant touch with Conor. They had his work, home and cell phone numbers, his work and personal email addresses and his postal address. If he’d had a special smoke-signal frequency, he was sure they’d have that on file, too.
“If there are any more dust-ups, I’ll be in touch,” Dr. Powell promised. “You might want to sign Amy up for a taekwondo class. Not that I’m advocating violence, but she’s not exactly effective when it comes to punching.”
Was that a joke? Was Conor actually grinning? “Thanks,” he said.
For keeping an eye on my daughter. For not entering a discipline report into her file.
For making me smile.
*
HE APPEARED in the open doorway of her office as she was packing her tote and waiting for her computer to shut down. She already had her coat on, a scarf looped carelessly around her neck. She hadn’t parked too far from the door, but she knew to bundle up before leaving the school building. The early December afternoon was gray and cold enough to make her muscles clench.
The man looming on the threshold to her office was enough to make her muscles clench, too—but not from cold. His windblown hair was thick and dark and just long enough to place him on the far side of fashionable. The rest of him wasn’t terribly fashionable, either—snug blue jeans, a ribbed sweater over a striped shirt, scuffed loafers and a bomber jacket of well-worn leather.