Mrs. Gentry raised meticulously plucked eyebrows. “I apologize if I gave any offense. I merely meant that she’s unlike most other children. I wonder if you might consider outside assistance with her?”
“Which means what, exactly?”
“A counselor or therapist. Perhaps someone who could unravel why she’s acting like this. I’m a teacher, Mr. Danvers, but I don’t have the answers to everything. I’m just afraid that if she isn’t able to form friendships now, she’ll struggle even more as she gets older. It’s hard to be friendless when you’re young.”
Gavin clenched his fists next to his thigh, trying to rein in his angry responses. He wanted to punch a hole in the wall, or maybe tell Mrs. Gentry to go to hell. He wanted to wrap Emma in cotton and carry her away and keep her from people who thought it would be easier to dismiss a child as odd than try to understand why she preferred to spend time by herself.
“I appreciate your concern, but I’ve already taken Emma to more than one therapist. It only made the situation worse.” He swallowed, his throat dry. “I’ve found that keeping her home with me is the best solution right now.”
His conversation with Mrs. Gentry continued until finally she requested that he ask the next set of parents to enter. She’d asked about Emma’s mother, which Gavin wanted to talk even less about than he wanted to talk about his daughter being odd, and all in all, he rather wished he’d skipped this meeting entirely. But maybe Mrs. Gentry had a point. Maybe Emma was too strange for her age, too out of sorts. What did he know? Sometimes he felt like he didn’t know what was up and what was down anymore.
He’d dropped Emma off at his parents’ place for the evening. Luckily, his sister Grace planned to be there and could keep Emma company. Emma liked Grace more than she liked most people, and for that, Gavin was infinitely thankful.
A door opened down the hallway, and Kat Williamson stepped out. He froze. He hadn’t seen her since she’d told him about Emma hiding in the closet, and for some reason, he felt embarrassed at seeing her again.
Maybe it was because his family seemed bent on making her life more difficult. Kat and Gavin’s sister Grace had gotten close a year ago when Kat had helped Grace exonerate her boyfriend Jaime, after he’d been falsely accused of stealing from River’s Bend. Now, Kat was the one to discover his daughter hiding in school supply closets.
“Gavin,” she said as she approached. “How are you?”
“Fine. Well, not really. But it will be fine, eventually.” He knew he was babbling. He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to keep dumping my problems on you, though. You don’t deserve it.”
She smiled a little. “It’s not dumping if I want to know, though.”
“Still.”
They stared at each other, and eventually she gestured to go outside to the parking lot. “I was about to leave anyway. I don’t have much in the way of conferences since I’m not a teacher-teacher. If you know what I mean,” she said.
“So you’re a fake teacher?”
“Ha, something like that. Since I only do one subject, I’m kind of considered to be on the sidelines most days. At any rate, it means I don’t have to get yelled at by parents every semester, so I’m not complaining.” She stopped in front of a green compact car.
“I want to yell at Emma’s teacher,” Gavin admitted. He leaned up against her car, and she did the same. She waited. He knew he probably shouldn’t talk about one of her colleagues like this, but he was tired and at this point, he didn’t care. “She basically said that Emma was odd and needed to see a therapist.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Did she really use the word odd?”
“Yes.”
“Damn. That’s unfortunate.”
“It seems like such a stupid thing to get angry over. But I keep hearing that word and my blood boils. Like Emma’s too odd to understand. Who calls a student odd?” He looked at Kat. “Am I overreacting? Please tell me if I am.”
Kat hesitated. “I’m not a parent,” she finally said slowly, measuring her words. “So I can’t say what is and isn’t overreacting. That being said, she could’ve phrased things much better than she did.”
He closed his eyes, sighing. “Okay, enough about me. Tell me about your problems.”
She let out a sudden laugh. “My problems? You don’t want to hear about my problems.”
“Yes, I do. If you want to tell me. Mostly I don’t want to make this always so uneven between us: me complaining and you having to stand there and listen.”
“Didn’t I already say that I asked for it?”
“Sure, but sometimes we do things that aren’t good for us.” She gave him a look, which made him smile for the first time in a while. “Come on, spill it, Williamson.”
She stared at him for a moment, like she wasn’t sure how to take this request. But before she could speak, her phone rang in her purse. “One sec…” she said as she pulled out her phone. As she read whatever had come in, she made a face before swearing underneath her breath.
Now it was Gavin’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Okay, what was that about?”
“Nothing.”
She said it too quickly. He turned so he was facing her and folded his arms. “Nothing means you look at the text and don’t make a face like that. Come on, spill.”
She worried her plump lower lip with her teeth, and just like that, desire spilled through him. He wanted to touch that lip himself and capture her mouth with his own. Instead, he reached for her arm, trying to pluck her phone from her grasp. “Come on,” he cajoled as she laughed, trying to keep the phone from him.
