Q 28)
“For the last two days I told Ned he was on his own doing his Wedgwood job. As far as he knew, he was. But I got in the car and watched him, following the bus, sneaking up side streets when he did the walk to and from school, sitting outside waiting for him while he was inside working. I didn’t want him to think I had doubts about his ability to do the route. At the same time I wanted to be ready in case there was any problems. Occasionally he knew I was there, especially on the walk back down to the bus, but he enjoyed ignoring me. He did everything as he was supposed to do it.
This morning I had to be elsewhere, and he knew it. Cathy drove up to Wedgewood at 11:00 to shadow him down the hill after work. Instead of waiting for the bus back to Nathan Hale, he went into the supermarket that’s near the bus stop, something he’s been told not to do. Cathy watched the bus come and go and still Ned didn’t come out. Finally she went in to find him. He was in the checkout line trying to buy a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies with money he’d filched from me. But he didn’t have enough cash, and the checker was trying to explain that to him as Cathy arrived, I suspect with steam coming out her ears.
It was the first day when he knew for sure I wasn’t watching him, and he took the opportunity to be sneaky. This was not good.
I had originally planned to let Ned go about his business on his own this week. No more secret observation. But after last Friday, I told him that from now on he could never be sure when I was or wasn’t watching him, and he should behave accordingly. This isn’t at all the way I wanted this to happen…I wish I could just trust Ned to do what’s right. But the plain truth is, I can’t… pp. 129-130
Does your loved one do sneaky things like this? Do you feel like you have to watch them all the time?
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