“What do we do, then?” Jill asked.
Dr. Grind considered the options. He could send the results to Mrs. Acklen and to the various members of the advisory council for the project, could allow Jill to add the findings to the article that she was already planning on childhood development. They could administer the experiment again to determine if this was an anomaly. There were many possibilities, but Dr. Grind felt a gnawing irritation with all of them.
“We’re going to hold off on this experiment,” he finally said.
“Lose the data?” Jill asked.
“No, not at all,” Dr. Grind continued. “We’re not getting rid of the data. We’re just holding on to it until it makes more sense. We’re just going to take our time with it, keeping it among ourselves, until we know the proper context and how to best present it.”
“That sounds problematic,” Jeffrey said.
“It is,” Dr. Grind said. “But we know these children. We know the framework that we have constructed to support them. And this experiment’s outcome does not entirely make sense. So we’re going to hold on to it until we find enough data that helps explain it.”
“Okay,” Kalina said. “We’ll do the marshmallow test next year. And again after that. We’ll see if the children develop a proficiency for the experiment, or if they continue to exhibit these same traits.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Grind said, feeling great relief to have someone else say it. “This is year one of a multi-year experiment.”
The fellows nodded in agreement, though Dr. Grind wasn’t sure exactly what else was implicit in the gesture. After everyone else had left, Dr. Grind continued to stare through the one-way mirror at the empty seat in the other room. Had he made a mistake? Were the children too protected, too spoiled? Was he alone responsible for any outcome? He reminded himself that he could not allow the luxury of doubt, the idea that he could simply try something else with this family.
And yet, here was a moment. Not enough time had passed that things were ruined. If there was doubt, he could pull the plug on the whole enterprise. It would take some explaining, and there would be hurt feelings, maybe even lawsuits, but he could stop it. But, he reasoned, either way, yes or no, there would be repercussions. And in one scenario, he would be alone again, even if he had made the right choice. In the other scenario, right or wrong, he would still be here, in the complex, with this family. It was not, he decided, worth the effort of contemplation. Whatever he had started, he would have to see it through until the end.
Three weeks later, Dr. Grind focused his attention on Brenda Acklen’s visit to the complex. She had made it clear that, after her first visit, before the parents had come to the complex, she would stay away from the project, content to fund it and to hear from Dr. Grind about the state of the children’s development and its effect on the parents. “You’ve made a family, Preston,” she told him once over the phone. “Best to keep the money separate from that.”
Still, for the benefit of both, they had included a clause that would allow either of them to back out of the project at the halfway point if things were not progressing in a way that made them comfortable. It had seemed a good idea at the time to Dr. Grind, who was worried about forcing himself to stick with the project even if the children and the parents didn’t seem to benefit from the arrangement. It allowed him to admit defeat and not waste more of his life on a family that would ultimately fall apart. For Mrs. Acklen, it allowed her to pull the funding if she felt that the project wasn’t fulfilling the goals she had outlined, however vague they were. The thought of losing the funding, if Dr. Grind slept regularly, would have kept him awake at night.