Brett Hayward is Verona's emotionally abusive father.
Personality[]
When he isn't working one of his many jobs, Brett spends his time complaining about his work, his ex-wife Sylvia, or anything else he perceives to have inconvenienced him. He constantly berates Verona for not pulling her weight in the household, even though she contributes more than a 13-year-old kid should be expected to.
He's currently thirty six thousand dollars in debt.[1]
Relationships[]
He was formerly married to Sylvia Hayward. After their acrimonious divorce, they are no longer in contact. He blames her for cheating on him and giving him an STD[2] as well as not paying child support.[1]
He makes life miserable for Verona by berating her constantly, and forcing her to do all the work around the house, and also by being miserable all the time.
He has a brother named Grant with two kids. He used to vent to Grant when Verona wasn't around, but Grant doesn't keep in touch much anymore aside from a batch Christmas letter each year.[3]
Appearance[]
He's tall with a large stomach. He has small eyes, red cheeks and closely cut, buzzed hair.[4]
Abilities[]
For his job he helps design specialised IT systems and server architecture for businesses. He also has a second job digitalizing articles and publishing them online as well as running a paywall for several small newspapers.[5] He works sixty hours a week.[6]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 “It’s just us, Verona. Your mother left, I’ve got work, I’ve got thirty six thousand dollars of debt from just the expenses of taking care of you and the house. She doesn’t pay support when she should. So I work the extra hours,” he said. “Two jobs.”- Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.8
- ↑ “I’m so alone, Verona. I’m trying so hard and I have nothing to show for it. No friends, no wife- your mother gave me an STD from someone she cheated on me with and then left. I can’t convey how alone I am.”
- Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.8 - ↑ Two kids, one born a few months after the wedding, the next about eleven months later. Divorce shortly after. Uncle Grant didn’t really stay in touch much. He sent out one big batch Christmas letter, and he was her dad’s go-to when her dad wanted to vent and Verona wasn’t around, and Verona’s impression was that Uncle Grant had stopped picking up the phone as much, or had backed out of being the emotional support. - Excerpt from Go for the Throat 23.2
- ↑ Her dad was a big guy. Tall, big around the middle, his eyes small. He was red in the cheeks, and he was sweating enough that his hair -buzzed shorter than the hair on his forearms- looked wet. He stood in the living room, wearing a short-sleeved button up shirt and slacks with zero personality.- Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1
- ↑ “I think so. I was going to say. Our real role is specialized systems for departments. Too many office environments and official environments are running off of systems designed in the 90s, with java or basic. We’ll do a specialized system for H.R., or for I.T. tickets, or email streams. But our fallback bread and butter is installing server architecture, handling everything internal. Then I moonlight a bit at a second job, a group of smaller newspapers pay me to translate articles to the web and maintain an analogue with a paywall, keep everything running. It’s automated, they mostly forget I exist until something goes wrong, at which point all hell breaks loose and inevitably it’ll be when there’s freezing rain, trees taking down phone lines, and hell breaking loose at the office of my first job.”
- Excerpt from [7.8 Spoilers] Can we Talk about the Girls - ↑ “And you don’t say it to me nearly enough. A birthday card two months ago is not a lot when I spend sixty-plus hours a week working for your benefit.”- Excerpt frim Lost for Words 1.1