Love at First Spark

8 | August: Conference Call

The end of August came much too quickly, and we were already a few weeks into school. Lucy kept bringing in her reading log half-finished and it was getting harder and harder to let that slide. As much as I wanted to confront Braden about it, I realized that he wasn't the issue.

Linda was.

After a few additional days of an empty sheet, Lucy slipped me her paper with something scrawled across the top. It was enough to make my heart shatter.

Redn is stupt :(

"How're the kiddos?" Daphne asked me one morning as we filled our coffee mugs in the staff lounge. The room was larger than it had ever been at any of my college placements, complete with a flat-screen television, huge sofas, and an espresso machine. We even had one of those special vending machines that spit out gourmet salads for lunch. At $12 a pop, I'd stick with my leftovers from the Thai place down the road.

"They're good," I replied, breathing in the deep aroma of hazelnut and vanilla wafting from our mugs. "I'm a little concerned about Lucy, though."

"Because of—" she lowered her voice and wiggled her eyebrows.

"Not exactly. But keep your voice down." It was already hard enough seeing Braden every morning when he dropped Lucy off. I didn't need any more suspicions. I poured a generous amount of cream into my coffee, watching the milky swirls turn it from a deep chocolate brown to a golden caramel. It reminded me of the color of Dex's eyes when the sun hit them. "She's only turning in her reading log on the nights she's with her dad. I'm worried about how the separation is affecting her, and I'm worried about the effort that Linda is not putting in."

"Linda, her mom?" Daphne sipped her espresso.

I nodded. "I mean, this is clearly a parental issue, right? It's something Linda and Braden need to work through. I don't want to tell them how to parent their child."

"But you're not," she said. "You're Lucy's teacher. You see that she's not getting her work done. Divorced parents or not, that's still a problem."

"Separated," I clarified. Not that it mattered. But the distinction felt important to me.

Daphne cocked her head to the side. "Ames, you have to look at this from the professional aspect, as a teacher. Would you approach it any differently if this were any other student."

"No, but that's not the point."

"Yes, it is," she argued, setting her mug down. Daphne placed her hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. She could be very intimidating when she wanted to be.

Now was definitely one of those times.

"Amelia, you are first and foremost this child's teacher. That's what matters. Your job is to make sure she succeeds. You've identified how she is not succeeding and other concerns you have about her level of improvement. This is when we intervene with the parents. You know this, it's what we were taught."

The clock on the wall ticked closer to the start of the school day. If I could catch Braden before the swarm...

"She doesn't enjoy reading anymore," I blurted. "Something has clearly changed, and I need to figure it out."

Daphne nodded, a smile growing across her face. "That's the spirit. Call a conference with Braden and Linda. If it's really the reading ability that she's struggling with and not so much that she's not reading with Linda, maybe Cindy can be there."

I blinked. "Cindy..."

My best friend rolled her eyes. "The reading specialist. Damn girl, do you ever pay attention at our staff meetings?"