"Abbi, she's my—"
"Is there anything else you require of me, Mr O'Sullivan?" she repeated, eyes fixed down on her notes. "Otherwise I am leaving."
I knew she wouldn't look up at me again. I watched with growing pain as her body quivered and her fingers clenched more and more tightly the stack of files in her slender arms. It was an unavoidable fact that I was the cause of her discomfort.
I was used to concessions during fierce negotiations in the boardroom, where losing something meant gaining something else. But it was clear that there was nothing to gain here. I could push Abbi harder in an effort to gain a chance with my daughter, but I would only cause her more pain without getting closer to my goal.
I wasn't used to losing. But I had lost. I would bear that pain for the rest of my life. The only win I had left was to release Abbi from some of her own.
"No, there's nothing else," I said finally. "Thank you, Ms Miller."
Abbi retreated from my office like a rabbit cut free from a snare in the forest. It was just as likely that the creature would return to the trap as Abbi would return to me.
For the first time in my life, I didn't have a plan of attack. I didn't have a strategy. I didn't have a multi-step plan to follow.
For the first time in my life, I simply did not know what to do.
Abbi
A few days later when I received a call from a woman announcing herself as the principal of Zara's school, I assumed they got the wrong number.
"No," I said, keeping my voice down at my desk. "I'm Zara's mother. Zara Miller."
"Yes," the principal said. "Zara is here in my office."
I frowned, my certainty wavering slightly. "There must be some mistake," I said with a growing sliver of doubt. "My child doesn't get into trouble."
"Ms Miller, you need to come in," was all the principal said.
I left work and drove over to the school, still with the belief that there had to have been some sort of mix-up. Zara wasn't just a good kid, she was the best kid. She was quiet and studious and respectful. I had no clue whatsoever what she possibly could have done to land herself in the principal's office. I had been more than familiar with the principal's office during my school years, but Zara couldn't be more unlike me if she tried.
But when I hurried into the principal's office, a spacious room with tall windows and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves my thousands a year paid for, I found my daughter nearly unrecognisable. Zara was slouched in one of the two chairs positioned in front of the imposing dark wood desk behind which the principal sat, tapping her pen against the surface with a disapproving scowl. I hadn't even seen Zara slouch while we watched movies on the couch weekend nights. She ate her popcorn and M&Ms with a straight back and raised chin as if she was dining on braised veal and rosemary fingerling potatoes at some private literary society.
Her arms were crossed petulantly across her chest, and her eyes, usually wide like the mouths of pitchers to drink in as much knowledge as her books would pour into her, were narrowed at her principal in the form of a silent protest. As my steps slowed upon seeing her, I recognised more of myself in her than ever before. I saw that questioning of authority, I saw that defiance for rules and dictates, I saw that bristling energy like a caged wolf.
"Zara?" I said as I slipped into the chair next to her and laid a hand on the armrest of hers.
I asked the question as if I wasn't sure it was her, as if maybe I had been right after all—they'd mistaken my quiet, thoughtful, introverted child for another. Zara didn't look at me, instead continuing her staring contest with her superior.
"Zara, would you like to tell your mother why you're sitting here in my office?" the principal asked.
I glanced between the principal's tightly drawn bun and my child's wild blonde hair that hung like a curtain over her face. I wasn't so sure that if I reached out and tucked the dishevelled strands behind her ear that I wouldn't see hazel eyes instead of green.
"Zara?" I repeated, though it was the principal who I looked to for answers.
With a sigh, the principal removed her thin gold wire spectacles and rested them carefully on a large book before pinching the bridge of her long, narrow nose.
"What's going on?" I asked, growing more and more concerned as my attention moved from the educator to my daughter.
"I've been asking Zara for an explanation for her behaviour this afternoon, because I also do not understand. She has refused to indulge me," the principal said, finally turning to me. "During French, each student was asked by the teacher to say, 'My father is…' and then provide an adjective from their recently learned vocab."
My stomach sank. I looked at Zara, but she was still hidden behind her hair. Not that I needed to see her eyes, I could practically feel the heat rolling off of her as if the blurry waves on a long desert highway.
"Zara refused to do this simple task," the principal continued. "When her teacher pressed her to do so, Zara made a scene, digging her heels in even further and disrupting class immensely."
I listened with the sensation that the principal's voice was drifting farther and farther away, like her voice was a lantern in a cave retreating till it was nothing but a speck in the
