The senator gave his wife one of those wife-beater glares, and for the first time since I’ve known her, I saw something approaching real fear on Susie’s face. So, there’s someone she’s afraid of after all. She wouldn’t even look her dad in the eye, just left her mom to handle it.
I imagine the guy was in a tough spot. This news had just been dropped in his lap, he was in the middle of some sort of business deal with the family, and he had a public image to keep up. Meanwhile, his daughter was running around campus doing as she pleased and fucking with people’s lives. I don’t feel sorry for him, not much anyway. He should’ve sent her ass to get some help instead of releasing her on the general public.
“So, senator, as you can see, this is about more than a windshield. I have here a list of all the crimes your daughter has committed, including the ones for which the statute has not yet expired. If even half of this comes to light, your career will be in question. Have a look.” Harold, the lawyer, pushed a folder across the table, and the senator picked it up grudgingly.
He seemed to grow angrier the more he read until he slammed it down on the table and turned to look at his daughter. “What have you been doing behind my back?” He turned his attention to his wife next. “Did you know about all of this?” She reached for the folder and pretended to read what was in there, but I’m pretty sure she already knew.
I was a bit confused, though. Didn’t he know that his daughter had been using his position to bully people since she got here? I imagine she’s been doing it for years before that as well. How could he not have known? He did something then that was so cold I even felt a little bit sorry for Susie.
“Do as you please.” He got up and left the table.
“Daddy, daddy.” Susie got up to run after him leaving her mother to do damage control. The Astor-Davenport camp didn’t so much as bat a lash; I’m enthralled.
His lawyers tried smoothing things over with Grandpa Astor, who was the one doing business with the senator, but I imagine the guy had left because he’d just been put in a very bad spot, and no one had warned him what he was walking into.
I’m almost certain that he’d been taught to walk away from the tough questions if he couldn’t evade them because that’s something I’m being taught in preparation for my time in the pros. I’m not certain I could’ve done what he just did, though, not with my kid. But then again, his kid is about to bring him down with her crap.
Susie came back into the room in tears and looked nothing at all like her self-assured self. The look she gave Lisa, though, had any feeling of pity I might have felt for her receding real quick. The lawyers were still haggling, but I guess Lisa’s lawyer had his orders not to give in on any point because he stood firm on each one.
When I heard what they were after, I almost fell out of my chair. A year in prison, forfeiture of her degree, and an order of protection that covers both Lisa and me. I’d all but forgotten that I had a part in this. Funnily enough, the windshield was barely mentioned. What the hell did they have on her?
No matter what her mom or their lawyers said, the answer was always the same. It was this or nothing. If she faced a judge, she stood to face more time behind bars. As to keeping it quiet, that was the senator’s job. Susie’s mom did her best to fight for her, which is something, I guess. But everything I’d just seen here told me more about who she was than the last four years had.
If she’d looked contrite or even remorseful, I would’ve felt for her, but instead, she glared and all but hissed at Lisa as if blaming her for what was happening. I wasn’t even really interested in what the lawyer had dug up at this point; I just wanted her out of our lives, and it looked like that was about to happen.
With the senator gone, the lawyers didn’t seem too interested in putting up much of a fight, but as it turns out, one of the men was not a lawyer but his PR person, and it was he who was fighting the hardest for a compromise or at the very least, not to go through the hassle of a trial which would make this all go public.
In the end, they agreed as long as there was no publicity, which Lisa’s family had no interest in, to begin with. Susie was not pleased, and she made it known with threats and other garbled nonsense, which her mother and the lawyers tried to squelch as they took her from the room.