Vanessa crossed her arms. “Two weeks. I called her teacher. She said Charlotte was still developing her writing skills. That means she’s behind.”
“Developing means learning,” he shot back. “That’s normal.”
He turned to Charlotte. “Has she done this every day?”
Charlotte nodded. “If I go to school, I get to play. If I stay home, I have to write and write.”
The realization hit him like a punch. She hadn’t been afraid of school—she’d been afraid of staying home.
Upstairs, he examined her more closely. Dark circles under her eyes. Fingers smudged with pencil. She looked exhausted.
“Have you been sleeping?” he asked softly.
“I dream that I can’t write it right,” she whispered.
Alex felt a wave of guilt and fury.
That afternoon, he confronted Vanessa.
“You need to leave.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“No. What you did is emotional abuse.”
“I was helping her succeed!”
“You isolated her. You lied to her school. You forced hours of work on a child who should be playing.”
Vanessa’s composure cracked, but she said nothing more.
Alex called Charlotte’s teacher, Mrs. Harper.
“Charlotte is exactly where she should be,” the teacher assured him. “Bright, imaginative, perfectly normal development.”