I Hid My Perfect Score novel · Chapter 22 of 32

Chapter 22: No. We Did.

Mom stared at Dad like he'd started speaking another language.

"Don't," she said.

Dad didn't move.

"Not here," he said. "Not in front of these people. They've seen enough of us."

He turned to the panel and nodded.

"Thank you for your time."

Then he walked out.

Paisley went after him first, fast, with her head down and her phone clutched to her chest.

Mom followed her, picking up her chair and then leaving it.

The panel chair watched them go over her half-moon glasses.

"Ms. Carmody," she said to me quietly. "I'm sorry this was necessary."

"So am I," I said.

My parents were staying at a hotel two blocks from campus.

It had a lobby with fake leather chairs and a coffee machine that ground beans too loud.

Paisley went straight up to the room without a word.

Mom sat on the edge of a chair with her purse in her lap.

Dad sat across from me.

Gavin stood. Emory stood behind my chair.

Dad looked at his hands for a long time.

"I lost my job on February tenth," he said. "I didn't tell anybody for three weeks."

"I got up every morning and put on a tie and drove to the office parking lot and sat there until five."

"Stop," Mom said.

"I sat in that lot for three weeks, Joss, because I couldn't stand to come home and be one more thing your mother had to manage."

He looked up.

"And sitting in that car, I finally had time to count."

"Count what?"

"Everything I let happen."

The coffee machine screamed through a grind.

Nobody moved until it stopped.

"I knew about the loan," Dad said. "I found the papers in the microwave drawer in April. I saw your name. I saw that J."

"I put them back."

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