Page 63 of The Headmistress

“How handy that you could use that to place your own daughter at Dragons.”

“The school used to have a nursery at the time. I was told the care was good.”

He said it as if it was some kind of defense. As if leaving his daughter on the school’s doorstep was okay because at the time Dragons had a tiny nursery, which was later phased out in order to further distance themselves from the townsfolk.

“It wasn’t easy to make the Board change the charter. In fact, the old trustees were so entrenched in their conservative ideals, they’d have fought me tooth and nail. You think Reverend Sanderson was a hard man? The men on the Board thirty years ago were bastions of conservatism, pillars of the community, determined to never allow thenew-fangled waysinto Dragons. But as it always goes, and I’m but one example, the bastions and the pillars have secrets they never want to come out. I know I didn’t. But I also didn’t want my child to be a pariah. And so Freddy and Ipersuadedevery single one of the trustees, with their affairs, with their gambling and their corruption. They themselves had long lists of transgressions, and so they agreed to change the charter. I pushed for Orla Fenway to be hired after that. I knew she’d usher in even more reforms, and you’d be well at the school. I couldn’t be with you, but I wanted you safe, Samantha.”

His eyes filled with tears then, and he looked down on his left hand where the wedding band hung loose on his ring finger.

“I had a wife and children. I was running for State Legislature. Thirty years ago, the scandal would have killed my political aspirations.”

“Wasn’t I one of those children? And how did those aspirations work out for you? You’re seventy and you’re still running for office. A lot of good all your machinations did you.”

Alden visibly flinched, but Sam was past the point of caring. She wanted to pace, to hurl things at him, to hurt him the same way he had hurt her. Instead, she looked him dead in the eye and went on.

“I know that being illegitimate wasn’t why you dismissed Magdalene from school. You just used that as an excuse, because it was the one thing in the charter that her transgressions fit under. She kissed another girl. You caught her and your homophobic self couldn’t cope with it! Well, look at you now, come crawling to your only daughter, who is very, very queer. How does it feel? God works in such ironic ways, don’t you think?”

The words tasted bitter on her tongue, and she expected him to not stand for them, but he simply stared at her with those damned, watery grey eyes.

“I lost everything, Samantha. In a matter of years, I lost everything, everyone. You are all I have left, and I had no idea how to tell you. My eldest, Edward, passed away a year ago, and I kept thinking that I needed to tell you, that I needed to reach out to you, because otherwise all I have worked for, all I’ve done in my life, it’s all for naught. But I was scared you’d reject me.”

“You were right to be scared. What, is it suddenly okay that I’m a lesbian?”

“Sam…” The look of naked misery on his face did nothing to soothe her. She had waited for this moment all her life, to meet her father. Now here it was, and the man had turned out to be a selfish asshole. She remembered how, when she was a child, Joanne used to tell her fairy tales about princesses who were lost and then found by their parents, and then they all lived happily ever after. Some fairy tale this was turning out to be.

“You decide to tell me you are my father only after all your other family members have passed away. And now, because there is nobody else, it makes me just good enough. Simply by virtue of me being the last one standing. I don’t know how you expect me to take your confession.”

She shrugged her shoulder, then stopped mid-gesture, consciously lowering the offending body part. Alden was staring at her with so much longing, clearly having observed the shrug, recognizing it for what it was, for the red line that connected them, made them similar when barely anything else did.

“This is just like what you did to Magdalene. You threw her out for being gay, and then when she was ‘respectable’ in your eyes, having been married not just to a man, but to a man of influence and power, you suddenly could make use of her. Irony has been left in the dirt here, Mr. Alden. It’s not even funny. It would be tragic if it wasn’t such blatant hypocrisy.”

“I’m sorry, Samantha. This past year has been agony for me. Wanting to tell you and being afraid you’d want nothing to do with me. Wanting to shield you from all the things that kept happening at the school, from all the danger and then not being here for you when it mattered most - when the school was on fire—”

“I didn’t need you here when the school was on fire! I needed you here when I was five and sick with chickenpox. I needed you here when I was eleven and beaten by an older town kid for no reason at all. I needed you here at thirteen when some asshole threw me out of his Christmas party because I dared to clock his even bigger asshole of a kid for calling me a ‘dirty orphan’. I didn’t need you here last night. I had other people who were here for me.”

Alden’s hands tightened on the bed frame, and he exhaled on a sob.

“You could have died, Samantha. If not for Magdalene, you could have died. I saw her hands, I saw how she dug in the rubble until she found you.”

“You were on the island that early?”

“I ordered the boat the moment I found out that the school was burning. It was still early then, I got in just as they were looking for you in the pile of debris under the staircase.”

“Well, for once, you were present for all the action then.”

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right.” He nodded shakily like a marionette with a torn string. ”I can’t change anything about the past. But know this, I will do anything, anything you need to save the school. To save Magdalene. To save you.”

Sam wanted to laugh. Cry too, but mostly laugh. And so she did. She threw her head back and let out a peal of laughter. If it sounded a touch hysterical, she didn’t care.

“God, I’ve waited thirty years for my dad to come and save me. You know I spent countless nights all alone in that little room they set up for me out of the transformed closet, in the faculty dormitory next to Joanne’s room, and prayed to God for mydaddyto find me. I went to church like a good little girl and prayed. Reverend Sanderson said all prayers come true if your heart is true. I thought something must have been very wrong with mine since my one and only prayer was never answered. And then I fucking stopped praying because what kind of cruel prick tells a five-year-old kid that, if her prayer for a father isn’t being answered, it’s because her heart isn’t true?”

Tears were streaming down Alden’s blotchy face freely now, and he made no attempt to stop them. He was an ugly crier, and Sam had a silly thought that she was grateful to genetics for not inheriting that from him.

“I’m sorry, Samantha.”

“Yeah, you kinda are sorry. And pathetic. You’re here to do what now? Save the day? Make sure Joel and the other trustees don’t throw Magdalene out? Hell, you already did once, and then you almost did it again this very summer. If I hadn’t yelled at you—”

“I thought she was putting you in danger! I was concerned that she wasn’t ready for the amount of responsibility and authority placed on her shoulders, that she wasn’t prepared, Sam, that she’d put the school at risk. I was so worried for you.” His voice was hoarse, and his hands were trembling. His face was turning more crimson by the minute, and suddenly Sam had another thought.

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