Junior Year Box Set

“Do you want to tell them what else Cal is up to?” Ms. Dixon said, as she obviously knew something the rest of us didn’t.

“Cal told me that he would be on the Nancy Grace show tonight,” Tom said.

“That’s not good,” Frank said.

When your PR agent was worried, you should be too. Nancy Grace loved a scandal, and she frequently talked about ‘victim’s rights.’

“We have one other issue,” Ms. Dixon said. “David, who’s your girlfriend?”

That one caught me off guard.

“I’m seeing some people, but don’t have a girlfriend right now.”

“Can you explain your Facebook page?” she asked.

Ms. Dixon slid her laptop over to me, and I saw my status wasn’t single.

“Hmm,” I said, and then it hit me. “Oh, shit.”

“‘Oh, shit’ is right. I hope to God you have a good explanation,” she said.

“I can do better than that,” I said.

I logged onto my cloud storage, selected the video and hit play. It was from the flight where I sat with the young girl who asked me to be her boyfriend. I’d updated my Facebook page so she could tell her friends. I just never thought to go back and change it. Frank downloaded the video and forwarded it to his staff to work on it for the press conference.

“Sorry, but someone pointed it out to me, and it didn’t look good,” Ms. Dixon said.

“And if it was pointed out to you, then the other side would have it,” Mom reasoned.

“Exactly,” Ms. Dixon said.

“Do you know what’s happening with the investigation?” Dad asked.

“Detective Kitchens is being closed-mouthed about it. He did assure me they were wrapping it up. We have another issue, though. Since David admitted the child was his, Mr. Fox has petitioned the court to freeze his assets until the matter of child support can be resolved. We will be heard tomorrow afternoon,” Ms. Dixon said.

“They can’t do that,” Tom blurted out.

“I don’t plan to let them. It’s just another dirty trick. What would be reasonable would be to have an independent accounting done to make sure you don’t ship all your funds overseas. Tom’s firm is already doing that. This is more of a nuisance tactic, and if Mr. Fox isn’t careful, he’ll piss off the judge,” Ms. Dixon said.

“He’s starting to piss me off,” I said. “Have you dug anything up on him?”

Frank pulled out a folder that was about an inch thick.

“The trick is to condense all this down into a sound bite. If you want to have fun at his expense, I have two items of interest: it took him six tries to pass the bar exam, and even though our Mr. Fox graduated from State, which is a great school to get your law degree, he finished 330th out of 342 in his graduating class,” Frank shared.

“Do you have anything on Cal?” I asked.

“David, don’t go there. He’ll be a grandfather of your baby someday,” Mom warned me.

“There is something that Ms. Dixon needs to be aware of: Cal left his firm in California under a cloud of controversy. I’ll let you read his folder later,” Frank said.

“What are you talking about? I helped interview him, and everything was fine. Can I see what you have?” Tom asked.

“Tom, I hate to say this, but David paid for the research, and it’s his property. It’s already extraordinary that he’s allowing you to sit in on these sessions. If it were up to me, you’d be excluded, and I think you know why,” Ms. Dixon said.

“I understand and appreciate David’s generosity. I don’t plan to take advantage of that,” Tom said.

“We know you won’t,” Dad said.

Then Dad’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and showed it to Mom.

“You better take that,” she said, and she didn’t look happy.

◊◊◊

Frank and his staff prepped me for the interview. I was surprised when Angie showed up. When she walked in, both my parents left. Frank told me he needed to rehabilitate Angie so that she couldn’t be used against me in the future. He wanted to feature the work she did for single moms, and my involvement in that. There was a lull, so I decided to go looking for Mom and Dad, but they were nowhere to be found. I called Mom.

“Hey, where’d you go?” I asked.

“The call was from Vickie Wesley-Prince. Phil saw the news and has questions. Your dad and I are meeting with her and her husband Carl to discuss what we should do.”

“How did she sound?” I asked.

“She’s not happy. Look, we’re there. I’ll talk to you at home,” Mom said, and then hung up.

When I walked back in, Angie wanted to talk.

“Are your mom and dad as mad at me as Greg is?” she asked.

I didn’t know how mad Greg was at Angie, but I had a pretty good guess.

“They’re not happy. Phil’s asking questions, and his mom didn’t want him to know that Dad is his father. Mom and Dad are meeting with Phil’s parents to talk about it,” I said.

“Shit,” Angie said.

“Yep.”

She looked upset, but clearly had more to say.

“I told Greg something about you. Greg said I had to tell you, or he would. I’m a little afraid of how you’ll take it.”

I just looked at her, which made her smile.