Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
What his mother had given him and Jag.
What Hound had given them.
What Chaos had given them.
But bottom line, no kid of his would be a kid he’d ever walk away from.
“He was unprepared for the fact that I was prepared,” she went on. “Benefit of the doubt, it was my age. But the truth of it, it was probably my gender and he underestimated me. So he didn’t think I’d dig and find out that, being a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorney and all, he’d managed to come out on top every time the mom took him to court to get some support. He stuck to the line he had no responsibility for a girl he did not know, he did not want, even before his wife got pregnant, something he alleges he told his wife before she conceived against his will, and was happy to allow to be adopted, if his ex would simply move on and stop harassing him. How this made it through in this day and age, I have utterly no clue. Accept he makes a lot of money, he comes from even more, and knows the legal system and those who work in it like the back of his hand. Credit to the woman, she didn’t give up, until the trying nearly bankrupted her and she had no choice but to go it alone.”
“What a dick,” Dutch muttered.
“Correct again,” Georgiana agreed. “Needless to say, he wasn’t a big fan of me mentioning all of that in correlation with the life his daughter is leading, which hasn’t been bad, because she has an awesome mom. But it certainly isn’t what it would be if he just paid child support. And matters deteriorated when I questioned him about how he felt about his part in the decisions she’s now facing.”
“Sucks for the kid,” Dutch noted, not having anything else to say.
Georgiana had more to say, though.
One thing was certain, she had a weight to get off her chest.
In other words, her trip to DC was seriously unfun.
“The daughter wanted to be a midwife. Certified midwives can earn anywhere from forty-five to one hundred and twenty K a year, depending on their experience and where they live. She’s now downgraded her goal to patient care technician, and even if that’s the most in-demand job in the US, and a necessary one, they make about twenty-five grand. That’s double the single-person-family poverty level, as defined by Federal Poverty Guidelines, but almost half of the lowest salary she’d make if she did what she’s been dreaming of doing. I don’t make much more than that. So I know the tough financial decisions you have to make, earning that much. Decisions you wouldn’t have to make if you brought in twice as much as you do.”
Dutch still didn’t have anything to say, except what he’d already said.
This was the way it was.
And it sucked.
“So how do I write this article without making the father out to be what he is, a total jackhole?”
Dutch didn’t quite clamp down on his bark of laughter before he asked, “A jackhole?”
“What would you call him?” She asked the question, but didn’t let him answer. Instead, she kept talking and doing it fast. “Don’t tell me. I can guess.”
“I bet you can,” he mumbled, smiling at the busy highway he was navigating. “It’s the truth he’s a jackhole. So tell the truth.”
“My editor requires objectivity.”
“Okay. So then objectively, he’s still a jackhole.”
There was a moment of silence and then she busted out laughing.
And that just cut it.
Because the woman had a generous mouth, a generous head of wild, dark, curly hair, a generous body…
And a generous laugh.
She also had a generous amount of attitude, he reminded himself. And not a lot of it was good.
He could see she’d had a shit trip.
He could not see her taking it out on a stranger who was doing something nice for her.
“My dad was…not around, maybe that’s it,” she muttered like she was talking to herself.
Christ, he shouldn’t have asked if she was okay. He didn’t need her to give him reasons to understand why she was behaving like a bitch.
“But I think it’s that somehow, I got on the kids beat,” she kept at it. “And it’s wearing me down.”
Even if he knew it was no good for him, Dutch again couldn’t stop himself from asking, “The kids beat?”
“If it has to do with kids, they assign it to me,” she told him. “The state of CPS. Foster care. Social media shaming. Vaping in schools. Now this. Meeting this young girl with good grades that don’t set the world on fire, but she also has a part-time job to help mom out at home, not hours to kill to do extra credit or go the extra mile. Her mom works a data desk at an insurance company, and she doesn’t do badly, she just doesn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to toss around. She doesn’t even have what it takes to make sure her daughter has the most recent iPhone and the bevy of other status symbols kids find important these days, to the point the girl’s prom dress was rented. And good or bad, that kind of thing matters to a kid.”