“If Fritz gets that worried, think about what a pencil-neck like Thomas Fox will do. My hope is that Paddy will convince him that messing with me is futile, and we can stop worrying about nuisance lawsuits every time something happens.
“In the long run, one visit from Paddy will be far cheaper than hiring Ms. Dixon and her team,” I said as my parting shot.
If my mom was anything, it was tight with a dollar.
“Why do you think it will only take one visit?” Dad asked.
I chuckled.
“Trust me, it will only take one. If you don’t believe me, call Fritz.”
“I want you to call this off,” Mom said.
“He’s already on his way. I’ll have to pay him regardless of whether or not he has a quick talk with Thomas Fox. I’d hate to waste so much money,” I said, and then told my parents how much it cost.
When Mom heard the amount, she got a determined look on her face. Wait until she found out that I’d agreed to buy Pam and Tracy a Mustang to drive at school in California. When she’d jokingly said I owed her a Cadillac, I think I’d said something along the lines of, ‘if I wasn’t buying them a car, then she wasn’t getting one.’ I might just need to go ahead and have her pick hers out.
◊◊◊
I called Lisa Felton and was disappointed when her phone went to voicemail, so I left a quick message. Next, I flipped through the channels on my TV, finding nothing of interest, and tossed the remote on the coffee table. I stared at my phone pathetically for a few minutes, hoping Lisa would call back. Then I decided to call Tami instead.
“It’s been over a week since we talked. I wondered if you had forgotten about me,” she chastised.
“A phone is a two-way street,” I responded.
“Wow. When you were younger, that would have worked,” Tami teased me.
“When I was younger, you were the boss of me.”
“Who’s the boss of you now?”
“I think that depends on who you ask.”
That was true. Right now, it was my mom.
“What did you do to make Mike mad again?” Tami asked.
“I threw him under the bus with Michigan. I tried to get them to pull his scholarship,” I admitted.
From his perspective, that was a pretty sucky move on my part.
We spent the next fifteen minutes catching each other up on what had happened since Valentine’s Day.
“Someone told me you plan to go to Stanford for your undergraduate,” I said.
“Looks like it, assuming I get in. Everyone says I’m a slam dunk, but we’ll see. I just got word that a couple of my scholarships have come through, though I’m still waiting to hear on the grants. My mom is hoping that I won’t have to get loans to pay for school. I just have to keep above a B average for the scholarships, and I should be okay,” she explained.
“You would have to become a serious partier for that not to happen. Do you even have a party animal anywhere inside you?” I asked.
“Just shut it, ‘stupid boy.’ You’re more straitlaced than I am.”
“When are you starting?” I asked.
“My mom asked me to come home for the summer, so I’ll start in the fall.”
She and I had talked about powering through and going to summer school when we were in college. I’d assumed that that would allow me to graduate early and use my football scholarships to help pay for either law or graduate school. Tami planned to be a doctor, and she needed a significant amount of education to become one. The faster she completed her schooling, the sooner she’d be able to practice medicine.
My original plan had been to take it slow and not hurry to grow up. Since then, I’d been taking AP classes and had a ton of kids. If the kid factor didn’t make you realize that you needed to grow up, I didn’t know what would.
When my parents had agreed to raise Coby for Pam and me, I’d only had him. Now our lives were in constant flux because of five little ones. Plus, Greg’s three demanded serious time commitments from my parents. I needed to hurry up and take over the full responsibility for my children.
This became even more apparent when my dad had his heart issues. While he loved all of his grandkids, they were just that—
All I had to do was remember what happened with Aaron to determine that was probably not the best course of action. Someone being paid to watch your kids was completely different from having someone who loved them watch them.
