The Half of Us (Family 4)

“I’m fine, Kris, thank you.” Abe swallowed hard. “Ja—Dr. Garcia, please have a seat.” He raised a trembling hand toward Angela. “There’s a chair next to your wife.”

“Dad,” Kristen said. “We’re already late.” She was tapping her foot on the floor in a gesture that seemed more nervous than frustrated. “Mr. Green was about to get started explaining why we’re here.”

He wasn’t gasping or breathing hard, so Jason dipped his chin in agreement, pulled out the nearest empty chair, and sat down. “Go ahead.”

“Th… thank you.” Abe returned to his seat and opened a manila folder. “I’m glad you coul—” The papers spilled to the ground, no doubt because of Abe’s shaking hands.

“I’ll get them, Mr. Green,” Angela said. She leaned down, then sat back up and held the papers out to Abe, who was frozen, staring at her hand. “Mr. Green?”

“Sorry,” he said. He closed his eyes and shook his head again. “Sorry.” He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes. “There should be a copy there for each of you,” he said to Angela. “Please go ahead and pass them around.”

“What is this?” Jason said when he looked at the paper Angela handed him.

“Kris’s results from the assessments we gave the kids. The first column shows Kris’s scores from the first week of school, the second one shows the scores from an assessment in mid-October, and the third one shows the scores from one she got on Monday.”

There were four columns, one blank and three with numbers, but Jason had no context to understand what they meant.

“Is Kristen having trouble in school?” Angela asked, her gaze darting between Abe and Kristen.

“No, not at all.” Abe’s voice sounded steadier, stronger.

Jason’s shoulders eased in response. He had hated seeing the other man so clearly upset.

“In fact,” Abe went on, “she’s doing exceptionally well.” He looked at Kristen and smiled. Her cheeks colored and she lowered her gaze and stared at the table. “The math score you see for the beginning of the year is what we’d expect from sophomores at the end of the year. That means Kris started out the year essentially two grade levels ahead. We talked about it, and she decided to work on a specialized lesson plan.”

“A specialized lesson plan?” Angela asked.

“I came in after school and Mr. Green taught me. He made lesson plans especially for me,” Kristen said excitedly, her words rushed. “And then in class, I did the work he gave me while he taught the regular lesson. He even let me come in during winter break for a lesson and gave me extra work to do at home.”

Abe laughed, the sound a balm to Jason’s frayed nerves. The entire interaction had him on edge. He felt like he was waging a battle inside himself and he had no idea why, over what, or what side he was on.

“I have never had a student who was so excited about doing extra work.” Abe shook his head and smiled at Kris again. She beamed.

“You’ve been meeting with my daughter after school hours and on vacation?” Angela asked, her voice slow and low. That was never a good sign.

“Mom!” Kristen shouted. “It wasn’t like that!”

Like what? Jason wondered. He looked at Angela and saw her dangerous expression focused on Abe. Oh, Lord. Did she actually think the man was behaving inappropriately with their daughter? Couldn’t she tell Abe was way too sweet, too earnest, and too damn gay to ever do such a thing?

“Mr. Green has been helping me. He says I have great potential!”

“He does, does he?” Angela said, her tone biting and sarcastic. “Potential?”

How she managed to make the word sound dirty, he didn’t know, but she did. And though Jason didn’t want to expose what he did in his personal time to his family, he couldn’t let Abe fall victim to anger or accusations. His stomach rolled at the stricken expression on the face he’d been longing to see and touch for days, and the need to protect Abe outweighed everything else.

“Ange,” Jason hissed and clasped her hand. “Tone it down and let the man speak. They’ve been doing algebra, for Christ’s sake, not reading romantic poetry.”

“Calculus, actually,” Abe corrected shakily. “We got through geometry and trigonometry last semester, and now we’re working on calculus. If you look at the test scores from Monday, you’ll see that Kris is now at the level of a first-semester twelfth grader.”

That information banked Angela’s fire. “Really?” She darted her gaze from the paper to Kristen. “That’s wonderful.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Kristen smiled at her mother and then looked at Jason expectantly.

“That’s really good, Kristen. It sounds like you’re working hard.”

“She has been,” Abe said. “And she wants to keep it up, which is why we asked for this meeting.”

“We?” Angela asked.

“Kris and I,” Abe responded. “My students are old enough to take responsibility for their education decisions.” He patted Kristen’s shoulder. “Some do it better than others. And in Kris’s case, she wants to take classes at the community college.”