My Daughter Is a Delinquent but She Is Still My Daughter

Chapter 4 Ridgeview

Ridgeview Academy was not the kind of school you transferred into. It sat behind a gate and a hedge and cost more a year than Amy's father made in two, and Amy had been there since ninth grade on a scholarship that paid for everything except the things that actually cost money.

I picked her up on a Tuesday morning before classes. Dax came with her. We sat in the car in the student lot and I explained what I wanted to do.

"You can't tell the school yourself," I said to Amy. "If you do, it looks like you're confessing. I've talked to my lawyer. We go to the school together, and you tell them what you've been doing, and you tell them he made you do it, and you tell them he's been taking your checks."

"He'll come to the house and get me," said Amy.

"He'll be in a meeting," I said.

Dax leaned forward from the back seat. "There's something else," she said. "The check money. He's been keeping it in a box in the closet. I saw it. There's a gun in there too."

"You've been in his closet?"

"I clean the house," said Dax. "Somebody has to."

I did not ask her what else she had done for that house. I had had years to learn how to keep my face still, and I used all of them.

We went in through the side door before first bell. The dean of students was a woman named Dr. Holt, and she listened to Amy for eleven minutes without interrupting.

Amy told her about the checks. She told her about the AP Calculus folder in her bag, the one in Dax's handwriting. She told her about the night in September when her father had grabbed her wrist in the kitchen and twisted it hard enough that it clicked, and how she had worn long sleeves for two weeks. She told her about the money he had asked Dax for, and the shooting range sticker on the back of his truck, and the gun.

Dr. Holt looked at me.

"Ms. Roarke," she said. "You understand that if this is true, we are required to bring in the authorities."

"I understand," I said. "I brought my lawyer's number. Call it."

Dax was standing by the door the entire time with her hands in her pockets, watching the hallway like she expected Amy's father to come around the corner. When Dr. Holt picked up the phone, Dax walked over to Amy and put one hand on her shoulder.

"It's fine," she said. "I'm right here."

Later, in the parking lot, Amy hugged Dax for a long time, and Dax let her, and over Amy's shoulder she looked at me with an expression I could not read.

"Was that it?" said Dax.

"That's the beginning," I said. "They'll place her somewhere while the case goes through. She won't be allowed to stay in the house."

"She can stay with me," said Dax.

"You live in a studio over a garage."

"I know where I live," said Dax.

"I know," I said. "That's why I'm asking you to come too."