Christmas at Timberwoods - Fern Michaels [68]
“If you don’t do it, Murray, then I will. What else would you suggest?” Sylvia asked craftily. “Do you have a better solution?”
“No, I don’t, but you aren’t having Angela locked up like some criminal. I have something to say about what happens to her. I am her father.”
“Some father,” Sylvia snorted as she examined her flawless manicure for a second or two. Her eyes flashed with anger when she looked up at him. “Don’t think you’re going to wriggle out of it this time by taking off again. That girl has made me a laughingstock for the last time. It’s just a matter of time before the newspapers and those damn bloggers pick up on these visions of hers. Then the whole world will know that our daughter is a nutcase!” she said, her voice rising hysterically.
“She isn’t crazy!” Murray Steinhart bellowed.
“Oh yeah? What do you call it when a person thinks they can see into the future?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Look, Murray,” she said, lowering her voice, “I’ve finally been accepted by the people who matter, and she isn’t going to spoil this for me, not this time.”
“You’re a fool, Sylvia,” he replied with a look of contempt. “They don’t care about you. Social climbing is a losing game. I mean, we have money but not that kind of money. Jesus, I can’t believe you’re not aware of that.”
“Actually, I am. So you need to work harder. Make more. I believe in you, Murray, I really do,” she said, nervously clicking one long fingernail against another.
“Spare me. You’ve got your priorities all screwed up. You should be thinking about our daughter. She needs you. She needs both of us. We’re all she’s got.”
Sylvia took another tack. “There is an alternative we haven’t explored,” she said in a silky voice, moving up close to him and brushing an invisible speck of lint from his suit jacket. “Darling, teenagers are committed all the time to various rehabilitation centers for drugs and behavioral problems. I wouldn’t even consider such a thing if I didn’t think it was for her own good. Angela is deeply troubled. She needs to be in a treatment program where she can’t run away.”
“I want her home.”
“But what if that isn’t healthy for her right now?” Her wheedling tone made her husband frown, but Sylvia pressed the point. “A new setting with professional care around the clock would do her good. God knows I’ve tried everything, but I don’t understand her. My God, who does?” Sylvia forced a tear from her eye. “This is all my fault,” she said, pretending to shoulder the blame. “I should have been a better parent. I shouldn’t have let her retreat into that studio. She needed to be out in the real world, on her own, not lost in her own imagination.” She brushed the tear off her cheek. “I don’t know what to think anymore. It’s too late to change her now. She is what she is. I think the best thing for everybody concerned is to have her committed. You must see that,” she cajoled.
“That isn’t the answer,” Murray replied, moving away from his wife. “There’s got to be another solution to all of this. I just have to find out what it is.”
He paced the length of the room, thinking about the past, his relationship with his daughter. He couldn’t pin all the blame for Angela’s strange behavior on Sylvia’s coldness. He had to accept some of the responsibility himself. After all, he hadn’t been much of a father these last five years. To tell the truth, he hadn’t been any kind of a father. Every time Angela had needed something he had accused her of being in trouble, and when she’d assured him she wasn’t, he’d tried to soothe her with money.
Angela, Angela.
Within minutes after her birth, he’d told Sylvia he wanted to name her Angel. Sylvia wouldn’t hear of it, so he had named her the next best—Angela. In his mind, though, he always thought of her as Angel. And for the first six years of her life, that’s what she had been—his little angel. Daddy’s sweet little girl. If only he could turn back the clock and do things all over again. He would spend more time with her,