Chapter Text
Donna Moss loves her job. Most days it’s rewarding, shaping the young minds of the future, but every now and then she has a day where she wonders if she’s doing enough.
Today is one of those days.
She has a parent teacher conference that’s been rescheduled three times over the last month, and she’s not looking forward to it at all. It’s not even that she has to talk about a misbehaving child – quite the opposite really – it’s the parents she’s more concerned about. She hasn’t seen a mother or a father of this child show up to an after school event or chaperone a single field trip in the two months she’s been watching this classroom, and she’s always been nervous about confronting absent parents.
They usually don’t react well to any news that isn’t ‘your child is doing perfectly average’.
It’s three minutes past their scheduled meeting time and she’s starting to get antsy. Donna knows that not all parents are big on punctuality, and three minutes is hardly anything, but she’s growing restless, and she knows it’s just going to make her nerves worse.
She’s about to stand up and walk off some of her energy when she notices a man standing in the hallway right outside her door. He’s wearing a grey suit and a coat that’s way too big for him, and while his hair and his tie are definitely disheveled, he still manages to pull off the whole boyish charm look. He’s staring at the name plaque on the wall outside her classroom, glancing back and forth between that and the piece of paper in his hand.
“Can I help you?” she calls out to him, noticing the confused look on his face.
“Yeah, uh, I’m looking for Miss Moss’s room… I think.”
“You think?”
“Uh,” he looks back down at the paper in his hand one more time, “yeah. I have a parent teacher conference with her that I’m running late for.”
“Ah,” she smiles at him friendly enough, “I’m Miss Moss.”
“You…” he blinks. “You’re Miss Moss?”
“Not the Kindergarten teacher you remember?” she guesses.
“No,” he says slowly, “I definitely would have remembered you.”
Donna feels her cheeks start to burn and she hopes they’re not as pink as she thinks they are.
“Uh,” she finds her footing again, “I took over Mrs. Green’s classroom after she went on maternity leave, just a little under two months ago. I’ll be here until the end of the year.”
“I vaguely remember sending a check to the room parent for some sort of baby basket now that you mention it,” he muses.
Donna nods her head as she waits for his brain to play catch up. It only takes a few seconds.
“I’m Josh,” he sticks his hand out to shake, “Josh Lyman.”
“Sophie’s dad,” Donna smiles as she returns the handshake, “so glad you could finally make the time to meet with me.”
“Yeah, sorry about all the rescheduling, things at work have been… well ‘crazy’ is a mild way of putting it.”
Donna’s heard every version of the busy parent story, and while she can understand the hardships of being a working parent, she has more pressing things she wants to discuss tonight.
“So,” she presses on, “do you know why I wanted to meet with you today?”
“I can probably guess,” he runs his hand through his hair. “She’s not sitting still, she’s too loud, she’s, what now, trying to overthrow the student government?”
“No,” Donna smiles, “although she’s probably more than capable if she really set her mind to it.”
“Tell me about it,” he sighs, but Donna notices the ghost of a grin float across his face.
“I wanted to talk about her reading ability.”
“Her reading ability?” Josh asks, sitting up straighter.
“Yes,” Donna nods. “Sophie’s reading well above her grade level.”
Josh blinks. “She is?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve noticed it considerably in the last few weeks.”
“Toby’s never gonna let me hear the end of this one,” he mumbles mostly to himself.
“What?”
“So, she’s reading well? That’s good, right?”
“Yeah,” Donna smiles at him, “it’s good, but only if we can keep up with her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to talk to you about giving her more reading material actually,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. “I’m worried she’ll get bored with the pace we’ve got going in class now.”
Josh takes a beat to consider his next question, and Donna can practically see the gears turning in his mind. He’s not what she was expecting, more observant and invested in his daughter’s schooling than he had anticipated.
“How come I’ve never heard of her doing well before?” he asks. “I mean, you don’t just jump up a reading level overnight… right?”
“Correct,” Donna tries not to laugh. “Some kids just aren’t overly showy about their reading skills, so it’s possible her previous teachers missed it.”
“How come you picked up on it?” he asks, saying you in a way that gives her goosebumps.
“I can tell by her speech patterns that she comprehends more than the level we’re learning at now,” Donna tries to stay focused on Sophie and not the way Sophie’s father keeps looking her up and down. “I’ve had her test read some things and I want to give her a few books to bring home, if that’s okay with you.”
Josh blinks. “You want to know if you can give my kid more school?”
“Yes.” Donna prepares her defense. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I really think that—”
“Uh, yeah, that’s fine,” Josh laughs. “I think she’d love that, actually, she really enjoys some of the books you have in the class library.”
“She does?” Donna asks, but really, she means you noticed?
“Yeah,” Josh smiles and Donna notices that suddenly dimples are forming in his cheeks. “Last week I helped her clean under her bed and we found like five stolen books tucked under there.”
“So that’s why she walked in with an armful of books the other day.”
“Yeah, I told her she couldn’t keep them, and I swear she almost cried. It wasn’t until I explained that some of the other kids might want to read them that she started to understand.”
“Sounds like Sophie,” Donna can’t help but grin, picturing the bubbly six-year-old who’s already become one of her favorite students. “Well, I want to start giving her some longer books, so she’ll be able to hold onto them for a while. I keep them on the back shelves just in case, but none of the other students have worked up to them just yet.”
The pride Josh is feeling for his daughter is evident all over his face, and Donna can’t help but think that this little girl is lucky to have him in her corner. Fathers and daughters can be a tricky thing, but this one seems to have his priorities straight.
Josh’s pager goes off before Donna can tell him any of this, and he’s grabbing his coat before she even knows what’s happening.
“I’m sorry,” he starts, and she thinks maybe he really means it. “I have to go, it’s… a work emergency.”
“Do you get a lot of those?” She’s not sure why she asks but something about him intrigues her.
“Some weeks more than others,” he shrugs, “this week more than most.”
It’s a vague answer, but it’s genuine, and Donna will take every little bit she can get. Understanding the parents helps her understand her students better, and this meeting has definitely been enlightening.
“Sorry to cut this short,” he winces, “but I really have to go. Look, you seem very capable, and I trust you to do whatever’s best for my daughter. Give her all the books you want, as long as she’s learning and she’s happy, that’s all that really matters to me.”
“Okay,” Donna starts as she walks him to the door, “I’m really glad to hear that Mr. Lyman.”
“Please,” he stops just outside the door, “call me Josh.”
“Josh,” she nods.
He pauses for a moment, the first time he’s stopped moving since he got there, and Donna can practically feel his eyes combing over her one last time.
“It was nice talking with you, Miss Moss,” he smirks, “you’re not at all who I thought you’d be.”
“Funny,” she grins back, “I was gonna say the same thing about you.”
His dimples peek out one last time before he’s swinging around the door frame and heading down the hall. Donna catches him look over his shoulder before he turns the corner and she can’t quite explain why it gives her butterflies, but it does.
She goes home that night in a much better mood, and she tries not to think about why that is.