Page 10 of Guarding Truth
Her auburn hair shimmered in the sunlight, even with the beanie she’d slung over her head. His heart caught—she looked just like her mother. They’d both lost so much after the car accident took Tessa.
“You should concentrate on passing the ninth grade without getting kicked out of school. No one’s hiring a high-school dropout, even a smart one.”
Had Caleb made a mistake when Ivy’s test scores had allowed her to skip from the sixth grade straight to high school? Mentally, the girl could handle it. But emotionally?
“You should know better than to hack a school computer,” Caleb said. “What’s going to happen when they kick you out, Ivy? What if the school had called the police instead of me? What you did is a criminal offense.” He willed his blood pressure to return to a normal level. No sense getting into an argument with a sullen preteen.
Caleb had tried to challenge Ivy, even before he’d become her legal guardian. She had a gift, and he’d wanted her to sharpen her skills in math and science. They’d sent special coded messages to each other when he was stationed overseas. For birthdays and Christmas, he’d sent her ciphers and challenges. But life with a twelve-year-old plus a demanding job sucked up every ounce of energy he had.
He pulled into the parking lot behind the apartment complex and looked at her. What would he do if she got kicked out of school? Would they even want to stay in Savannah?
He sighed. “Look, I know you’ve got a gift. How about I help you with some coding projects. But only if you stop…” Stop what? Hacking into school computer systems? Showing off how smart she was? Everything within him wanted to protect her childhood. He took a breath. “Stop trying to grow up so fast. Even though you’re in ninth grade, I want you to be a kid. I know you want to take on the world, but right now, I need you to take school seriously. Make friends, have sleepovers.”
She cocked her head to the side. “You want me to make friends with high school students?”
Right. Maybe he should have thought that sleepover comment through. “I just want you to have some fun times in addition to burying your face in a screen all the time.”
“Can I go out with a boy?”
Good thing he’d parked, or he would have wrecked the car. “I’m not ready for that.”
“Relax. I just wanted to see your reaction. But Iamin high school now.”
She stared at him, and he watched the battle going on in her mind. Like him, she couldn’t hide her emotions well and had no filter. “What’s going on with you?”
She huffed. “I miss Mom. I want things to go back to the way they were.”
Caleb sighed. “I wish the same thing. But we’ve got to make do with what God’s given us. We have each other. And I have a busy week ahead of me with work, which means I need you to stay out of trouble. Besides, you’ve got to get ready for the robotics competition this weekend.”
Her eyes lit up at the mention of the tournament. Her team had made it to the next round of the competition, and her bedroom looked worse than Caleb’s dining room table clutter. Electronics were spread from one wall to the other, with cords sticking out from under her bed like a secret science experiment. If only she had traditional kid problems, like having dirty clothes or makeup scattered about instead of spare robot parts littering the floor.
“I’m having trouble debugging the latest version of my bot. Would you help me later?”
“Of course.”
Ivy scampered out of the car and raced off to their apartment. But before she could seal herself off in her bedroom, Caleb confiscated all her electronic devices. He double checked under her mattress and her closet in case he’d missed any. Then he changed the Wi-Fi password. Not that it would stop Ivy if she was determined to get online, but it would at least slow her down. The girl had qualified for Mensa at the age of eight because of her advanced math skills.
If only there was an algorithm he could program to give him answers on being a parent.
He handed her a thick book he’d pulled from the bookcase in the living room.
“What’s this?” she asked, flipping pages in the manual.
“It’s a book on robotics. It will help you with your program. Because no internet for one week.”
A look of horror rippled across her face. “How am I supposed to work on the program errors if I can’t have internet?”
“And that will be your biggest challenge yet.”
Returning to his pile of work rubble that consumed the dining room table, he grabbed an envelope from the stack of mail.
He didn’t need to look at the piece of paper to know word for word what it said. But he pulled out the document and stared at it.
We believe it’s in the best interests of Ivy for her to be raised by her grandparents.
The words typed on the lawyer’s stationery made his skin crawl. The Covingtons had filed a petition to become Ivy’s legal guardians. His brother-in-law’s family didn’t think he was a fit parent.
And maybe they were right, based on today’s fiasco. What would happen if Bob and Betty Covington found out that Ivy was about to get kicked out of school for hacking?