The Colonel's Daughter Is Gone novel · Chapter 6 of 24
Chapter 6: The Panel
The panel met in a high white room on Bedford Square, at a long table with three chairs on one side and a screen on the wall.
On the screen, at four in the morning Brooklyn time, my husband sat at his desk in full dress uniform.
He had not slept either.
He looked at me through the camera for a long moment, and I looked back.
"Colonel Rainey," said the woman in the middle chair. "Thank you for joining us. You have lodged a complaint that your daughter forged your signature."
"I'm a decorated officer," Rodney said. "I don't make accusations lightly. My daughter is a troubled girl. She lied to this school, she lied to her family, and she ran off to another country with her mother."
Hattie sat very straight beside me with her portfolio on her knees.
Cedric sat on her other side, writing in a notebook, and had not looked up once.
"Miss Rainey," the woman said. "Did you forge your father's signature?"
"No," Hattie said. "I'm eighteen. My application didn't need one."
"She's a child," Rodney said. "She has no idea what she signed."
"Colonel, you'll have your turn." The woman raised a hand. "Miss Rainey, why do you think your father filed this complaint?"
Hattie opened her laptop and turned it toward the panel.
"Because he withdrew all six of my other applications himself on Tuesday morning," she said. "Here are the timestamps. Every one of them says withdrawn by parent or guardian. This is the only application he didn't know I made."
The woman leaned forward.
On the screen, Rodney's jaw tightened.
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