friends are, who I've been dating, if I'd like to go out for cheerleading."
"If you wanted to discuss any of those things, all you had to do was bring them up."
"You made me feel that next to your work they were frivolous, that you had more important things to do."
He couldn't dispute that. He couldn't think of anything that interested him less than whether she wanted to go out for cheerleading. She'd never indicated a desire to change schools, he knew better than to interfere with her friendships, and he'd damned well have met every date at the door with a shotgun if he'd had any idea his daughter would end up pregnant.
"I have a lot of deadlines," Ron said. "Some things can't wait."
"Everybody told me not to bother you, that you had important work to do. They didn't say what I did was unimportant, but that's what they implied."
"Margaret wouldn't say that."
"Why not? Mama did. When I wanted to sit on your lap or ask you to read me a story, she'd tell me not to bother you, that you had important work to do. Everybody acts like what I do isn't important compared to you."
Ron hadn't suspected the problem extended beyond him and his daughter. He was at a loss to know what had been said and what he could do about it.
"You don't have to ask me," Cynthia said, resentment filling her voice. "You can ask Miss Roper."
"I can't help you there," Kathryn said. "All I know is the article in the newspaper was very flattering. Then when the second article came out in Time, he became a minor celebrity."
"That's all I heard about for months," Cynthia said. "Everybody wanted to know what you were doing and how much money you were making. Why did you let them interview you? Didn't you know it would make my life miserable?"
"I thought you'd be proud of me." The Charlotte Observer wanting to do an in-depth article on him pleased him more than the Time article because it meant he was finally getting some recognition in his hometown. He was no longer the upstart from the trailer court who'd managed to wheedle a few scholarships out of some nice schools. He was that brilliant young businessman who'd distinguished himself at some of the finest schools in America and was making a name for himself on the international business scene. "It never occurred to me that it would be a problem for you. You should have told me."
"And have half the world saying I was an ungrateful brat or that I was just jealous of your success?"
"Nobody would say that. There's no comparison between the two."
"That's just it," Cynthia cried, pouncing on his words before he could understand the way she'd taken them. "Everything you do is important. Nothing I do is."
So it wasn't just that he'd failed to be aware of the changes in his daughter as she grew up. Everything around her had conspired to make her feel unimportant, that other people - strangers - had more of a right to her father's time than she did. And her own mother had begun the process.
"The world doesn't value feelings when they're set against large sums of money," Kathryn said. "It's not fair, but that's the way it is."
"The world might not value your feelings, but I do," Ron said. "I know I've let myself get overly preoccupied with my job. There have been times when I've almost forgotten I had a family. It may not seem like it, but everything I did was as much for you as it was for me."
"Yeah, right!"
Complete disbelief. How did he explain that a father could love his family so much he would work himself to exhaustion for them? Just because this wasn't a case of a poor man with a backbreaking job working to support a large family living below the poverty level didn't mean it couldn't be the case. Kathryn had said Cynthia might not want the same things he wanted. If that was so, she wouldn't see his work the same way he did.
"Both your mother and I came from poor backgrounds. We only got ahead by constant hard work."
"Mama told me that all the time. I suppose she did it to make me understand why hard work and success were so important to both of you, but if you're doing it for me, how come I got left out, forgotten, ignored?"
"Because I forgot you weren't your mother or me,"