From when she was a small child bringing home report cards in which her teachers extolled her general excellence, Michael had been waiting for the day when Stephanie would go off to university and make him proud. He was so certain that his daughter was going to do well and so excited to see how well that after Stephanie told him that she was done with exams he started opening all of the mail that arrived at the house that was marked "Glendale University". His expectation was that when he opened the envelope that contained her semester results he was going to be blown away. And he was.She hadn't taken any of her exams and had failed everything.
The idea of his daughter failing had never entered Michael's mind. The sight of her results sent him into a depression the depth of which he hadn't experienced in years. He left the toast and coffee he'd made on the kitchen counter and went back to bed where he intended to remain until Stephanie returned home and they could get to the bottom of this.
Jo-Ann found Stephanie's results stuck to the refrigerator door when she returned home from work. They'd been put there by Eric, who had spent years warning his parents about his sister without them ever listening to him. Jo-Ann was disappointed by the results but not surprised by them. She had suspected from the beginning that Stephanie's only reason for studying accounting was so that she could continue taking advantage of her father. Stephanie had let them down before, but this time her screw up came with an enormous cost that Jo-Ann didn't want to begin to think about how she was going to pay. She made herself a cup of tea, sat down in the lounge and braced herself for an explosive evening. Michael emerged from his room while Jo-Ann was still drinking her tea. He made himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen and sat with Jo-Ann in silence in the living room, waiting for Stephanie.
"Hey mom, hey dad, sorry I'm late, we were doing some research at the library and lost track of time," Stephanie said when she entered the house.
She walked into the living room, saw the murderous look on her father's face and the fear on her mother's and knew that there was trouble. She realized how much when she saw the sheet of paper with her results on the coffee table. It wasn't like Stephanie to allow herself to be cornered like this, but she had been so busy with the pregnancy that the issue of dealing with her exams had slipped her mind. Now, because of her sloppiness, she was walking into a major confrontation without any means of defending herself.
"Stephanie, sit down please," Michael said coldly, using everything at his disposal to stop his control from slipping away from him.
Stephanie walked sheepishly to the seat opposite her father's. She sat down and looked in his eyes and saw that there was nothing that she could do to elicit mercy from him.
"Tell me, what is this?" He asked, lifting up the report.
"It's my report," she said stupidly.
"Yes I know it's your report, what I want to know is why it's so bad. Tell me, how is it that you managed to fail everything?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know. Listen here Stephanie, don't sit there and talk shit to me like that, okay; DON'T TALK TO ME LIKE I'M SOME SORT OF FUCKING IDIOT!!"
"Michael please," Jo-Ann whimpered.
Michael, blinded and deafened by rage, continued.
"Tell me Stephanie, how did this happen? You were spending almost every night with your study group; you got As on all your assignments; if you understood the work so well you should have had no problem with the examinations, so why didn't you take them?"
Stephanie kept her head to the ground and said nothing in response, chastising herself in her mind for having been so sloppy.
"ANSWER ME!!"
