"It's okay, Dad." I said, trying to reassure him. He looked pretty upset. His mouth was pressed tight and his chin was trembling.
"What?" Dad said. "Loren, it's not okay. Don't say that. This man should not be in a school, he should not be around children, and he probably shouldn't even be alive!" I flinched at the end of Dad's sentence. I had never heard him talk that way. "He definitely shouldn't be around you, Loren. Why didn't you tell me? Did you think I wouldn't care?" Maybe my face gave me away. I averted his gaze and looked down at the carpet. Dad took a giant step towards me. There wasn't another chair in the room so he knelt on the floor in front of me, grabbing my wrists and forcing me to look at him. I started to lose some of that carefree feeling I had been carrying around since school.
"Loren, nothing means more to me than you." He stared at me, flaring his nostrils, giving me a chance to speak, the last thing I wanted. He hissed the next word. "Nothing." The grip on my wrists was firm, insistent. I couldn't believe how desperately I wanted to believe him. My heart was pounding. "I won't let anyone hurt you. I will stop it when I know about it, Loren. I will stop it. I didn't know about it before. I don't blame you. I don't blame you at all. I am not ashamed of you. I never was; I never will be. I know it's not your fault. It's that bastard Carlson's fault and he needs to be punished. People need to know what he did and what kind of a person he is." I bit my lip, my eyes were feeling dry from being so wide open for so long. But I couldn't blink. Dad was still staring at me.
