Lex waited for Lu to pick a chair and then sat. He felt he needed to portray the image of a concerned parent, so he made sure to sit on the front of the chair, alert and rigid. Fake it till I make it, he thought.
“I have to say that my phone call to Mr. Pellitteri explained some of the questions that I was going to ask you, Miss Knight,” Mr. Seddon began.
Lu glanced in Lex’s direction but not at him directly. He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t ready to fall into those cornflower depths just yet.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Seddon,” Lu replied. “Perhaps you could explain what is going on, without being cryptic,”
Lex almost smiled.
“Certainly. It appears that Nina has been, what’s the proper American word, ‘fleecing’ some students of their money.”
Both Lex and Lu reacted. Lex felt the eyebrow go up, and Lu flinched slightly.
“At first, I didn’t really understand and I thought the offense was more serious. But after learning of Mr. Pellitteri’s involvement in her life, it has diminished in gravity.”
Sperm donor, thought Lex. That’s about the extent of my involvement. But he needed for Mr. Seddon to spell it out for him.
“Mr. Seddon, maybe you should just tell us what happened,” Lex said, reiterating Lu’s earlier request.
“Nina has been peddling some of your possessions for cash.”
“I beg your pardon?” Lu said at the same time that Lex said, “What?”
“From what I have gathered from some of the students and a couple of the parents who have called me, Nina has taken some of your things—T-shirts, wristbands, socks—and sold them to your adoring fans. Like I said earlier, I thought it much more serious before I realized that she was your daughter.”
No one said anything for a moment. Lu recovered first.
“Nina has profited from her father’s name?” she said, trying to clarify it for herself.
“Yes. This is what I have pieced together. Some of our students are huge football fans, as I am sure you know. As the season started up, they began talking about it. At one point, Nina told them that you,” he looked at Lex, “were her father. But they didn’t believe her. So she retrieved an old jersey from your house and brought it in to prove her claim. There was a validation, which I only found out later. My computer-science teacher told me that the students looked up pictures of you on the Internet to indeed verify that the jersey belonged to you. Once they believed her, they wanted stuff. So, the jersey, the first article to sell, went for cheap. But then the prices started to go up. One wristband was signed and went for, I think, twelve pounds.”
Lex leaned back in his chair, remembering when Nina had asked him to sign the wristband. She said she wanted to take it home with her so she’d have something of his. And he’d bought it. Hook. Line. Sinker.
Lu looked at him and he nodded his head. Shaking her head, she looked back at Mr. Seddon.
“Of course Nina will return all of the money.”
“Yes, well apparently the students are reluctant to give back the merchandise.”
“They can keep it,” Lex offered. “She’ll still return the money.”
“Very well,” Mr. Seddon said. “Mr. Pellitteri, Miss Knight, I know that there have been a lot of changes in Nina’s life recently. And she is so pleasant that I’m sure everyone was secure in the knowledge that she was just adapting. But it seems that she is not as comfortable as she appears.” He paused. “I am not here to tell you how to parent. I am a parent myself and I often long for a manual to raise my own children. But perhaps you may want to talk to Nina and help her through this tumultuous time.”
“She has had a rough seven months,” Lu remarked. “We are on our way home for a couple of days. I will make sure that we spend some time talking about this.”
Lex said nothing. He had nothing to contribute, once again. He felt like an ass. He made them move here. And not at any point had he considered how it might affect his daughter. He’d been so caught up in his hurt and the betrayal he felt that he’d come up with a plan that worked for him. Maybe she’d have been better off not knowing about him.
Lu was furious. Once Mr. Seddon released them to collect Nina, Lex followed her from the office. She couldn’t believe that her nine-year-old daughter had been stealing from her father and selling his things. A small part of her couldn’t believe Lex was so well-known that kids wanted to buy items of his clothing. She was embarrassed that her parenting skills were being questioned by the headmaster and that Lex was exonerated because he hadn’t been involved. She could admit that she felt she deserved most of the blame, but it still burned her up that he got to be the good guy.