Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(10)

She had more to say, she just didn’t say it.

“What’s this one?” he asked quietly.

“The student loan crisis.”

“And?”

“Well, there’s aid. Not a lot of it, but there’s aid. The thing is, you can’t tap into it if your parents have money.”

“Yeah, and that makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does. The thing is, some parents aren’t parents. But the aid agencies regard them as parents. So, say your mom looks after you in all ways, including financially, and you’re barely scraping by. But you want to go to college. She can’t pay for it. You can’t pay for it. You apply for aid you can’t get because your dad’s a high-powered attorney in DC, who makes seven figures, but he’s not given you or your mother a single dollar or even seen your face or asked to do so since he took off when you were two years old. But his salary is calculated, and you have no shot at aid. So you have two choices. Don’t go to college, or eventually start your life weighed down by crippling loans. And it’s alarming how many kids pick door number one.”

“College isn’t the only choice and it isn’t the only road to a good life,” he told her.

“You’re correct,” she replied. “But schooling to learn to be a plumber, an electrician, a hair stylist, an HVAC tech, a vet tech, a massage therapist, and the list goes on, isn’t free either.”

She was right.

“So, you’re back from DC after meeting with a filthy-rich, deadbeat dad whose kid is deciding not to go to college because he’s a deadbeat,” Dutch surmised.

“Yeah. And he wasn’t big on the way our chat went, and I assume with his demonstrated prowess in the courtroom he has a great command of the English language, but in communicating that to me, he chose to use words far worse than the ones you use.”

“You blindside him?” he asked.

When she answered, the snap in her tone was back.

“Of course not. I told him the article I was working on and why I wished to speak to him. Prior to me flying out, he had a great many things to say about ‘making your own way in the world,’ when he’s a trust fund baby, his college and law school were paid for by his folks, and his parents also have chosen not to claim the results of his first marriage, a marriage they did not approve of. He thinks she…his daughter, that is…will improve her character by having to work for her future. Not that he has any clue what her character is, considering when he left her, she couldn’t form sentences.”

Dutch was of a mind, if you had it, and it didn’t make them spoiled brats, you gave it to your kids. Otherwise, what was the point of having kids in the first place, if you didn’t give them the things they needed to have a decent life? If you didn’t give them whatever you had to in order to give them a good life from the start until you dropped dead.

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.”