Tom Clausen, a high school principal struggles under pressures from his superintendent. Dr. Charles Wainright, an imposter with fraudulent credentials who charmed and hoodwinked the chair of the school board into representing him as the solution to the district's challenges.
Clausen's eccentric neighbor, Garnet Pittman, is taken by Tom's quick mind and, work ethic. Lacking an heir, he secretly probes to see if Tom could replace him as head the Pittman Foundation that funds area scholarships. In declining health, Pittman is besieged by opportunistic lawyers and money men.
The superintendent's jealous intolerance of others' popularity sets him against Clausen and his creative teachers. Transfers and forced resignations of staff send morale into the cellar as mounting tensions set the teachers' union against Wainright. The strife invades a faculty marriage. Problems from losing key teachers and mounting criticism from the public so drain Clausen's strength that a minor heart attack forces him into a medical leave.
While Clausen recuperates, Pittman continues cryptically quizzing him, even as his own health declines. Meanwhile, inquiries into Wainright's background suggest that he might be a fraud. Under suspicion, he prepares to disappear, pulling his personnel file, listing his house for sale. He leaves without warning, not suspecting that his wife, whom he chose for her docility and obedience, had used copies of his private papers to freeze his accounts. Divorce would follow.
Near death, Pittman, ever the arch-manipulator, entices Clausen to oversee preparation of his mansion for his memorial party, counting on his notoriety as Northbridge's most celebrated curmudgeon to draw a crowd. Invitations were prepared for fired staffers and those who fired them, victims and victimizers of his corporate world, and contenders for parts of his estate.
Having overseen the house's facelift, Clausen werved as de facto host while Pittman's ghost pulled guests' strings. Emotion flared, causing some to flee, other to do battle. Bystanders enjoyed seeing known bullies called to account.
Wainright was arrested in Utah after making a scene when his credit cards were rejected. When his fingerprints linked him to a different name, he gave it up, cursing his wife for binging him down.
The school board elected a new chair. A letter to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Clausen requested their attendance to witness Pittman's posthumous reading of his video-taped will in which he named Clausen as his replacement, not only over Pittman philanthropies but to seats on the boards that fund them. The officers of Pittman's interests jumped to offer their expertise but armed with advisors' findings of irregularities, Tom offered them the choice of resigning or facing charges.
A year later, Tom and Jane Clausen were seated in Northbridge High's bleachers to witness graduates receiving special honors. A wash of emotion stirred them to lean into each other as Deanna Foresman, one of thirty regional winners, was awarded the $12,000 Charles Winston Pittman scholarship. Jane whispered, it's like we have a new child to watch grow. How can we thank him enough."
