Chapter 9

The next two days went by in a blur. I hired some contractors to help me finish the guesthouse and we worked from early until late. By midday Wednesday, Amanda and Kayla were in a nearly finished guesthouse picking new furniture out of a catalog. I was going to leave them with a shower enclosure on order with a contractor to install it and blinds that would be another week. They could do those themselves. Amanda hadn’t ordered a sign for the road yet, and that was about the end of it.

I knew Amanda’s finances were running thin, but mine were doing fine. I had twelve grand extra in the bank just from the summer rental of my house. All the work on the guest house had given me some ideas of my own. I made a guess at the cost and figured it would take about half of that. I knew just what to do with the other half.

The three of us walked up to the main house for lunch. It was a quiet walk. We all knew that I’d have lunch and leave. I needed to get home and start getting ready for the school year. Thursday was the first prep day. It didn’t take me long to pack and I did that while the ladies made sandwiches.

It had started to drizzle, and it seemed to fit the mood. We ate slowly and finished too soon. I had some parting thoughts and after a deep breath, I jumped in.

“Kayla, how many college credits are you going to have by the end of this school year?”

“Fifteen, if I pass them all and then the tests at the end.”

“I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that. From where I sit, you have a couple of choices. You can keep going to high school, accumulating college credits, and then apply to a traditional college. You can try to graduate early, and I think you could do that pretty easily. Or, you could make this your last year of high school.”

“I won’t have enough to graduate ... and I’m sure not dropping out.”

“What are you talking about, Danny?” Amanda asked.

“I talked to admissions at A-B Tech last week. You have the grades and will probably get the grades to apply for early admission to A-B. You can take college-level classes at college. You’d have more control over your classes and schedule, but it would be a bit of a drive.”

“What about a high school diploma? Doesn’t she need that?”

“There are two ways to go with that. She could test for her GED. Normally, kids that drop out and then realize they need it get that, but she could get her equivalency that way. Or, you could home-school her the last two years.”

“How am I going to have time for that, and how is she going to have time for that if she’s going to college?”

“You don’t have to do a thing. You register with one of the home-schooling associations. Kayla takes the college equivalent classes she needs to graduate from high school and gets dual credit. She could graduate from high school and get her two-year degree at the same time. The admissions office said it’s been done, usually by pretty gifted students. When you’re 18 and already have an Associate’s degree, traditional colleges aren’t too concerned with your high school diploma.”

They both had tons of questions, and I tried to answer them all. “The biggest advantage is being in a classroom with people that want to be there. The other advantage is schedule control. The disadvantage is cost and distance. Here’s another drawback, they don’t have an athletic department.”

“That’s not going to work,” Kayla said, as I knew she would.

“You can still participate in high school athletics. You’d still be in high school, just home-schooled and they have to let you participate. So that leaves cost but a two-year college isn’t that expensive and this might help get her started.” I slid a check across the table for $6,000.

“What’s this for?” Amanda asked. She was stunned.

“While I’ve been here, I’ve had my house rented out. That’s half the income. I don’t need all of it, but you do.”

“I can’t take this. If I’d hired you, well, I couldn’t have afforded to pay for everything you’ve done. You can’t pay me. It’s not right.”