“I implied no such thing,” Walton replies lamely.
“I had no idea you’d hired someone to shoehorn her into our pilot’s seat,” Franklin mutters. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“He wasn’t thinking,” Caitlyn sneers. “He was pussy-whipped by his fucking sister, to use that disgusting term he’s so fond of.”
Walton jumps to his feet and slams a fist on the table. “Fuck you!” he snarls before he marches out of his own office. Sometimes he hates his overbearing shrew of a sister. Caitlyn, too. He backtracks to the office door and glares at his partners. “It’s a good thing for you two that I’m always at least one step ahead of the wolves you see nipping at our heels all the fucking time!” Then he slams the door and stalks away to the conference room, bangs that door shut behind him, and starts scheming anew.
Chapter Nineteen
I’m standing at the window of my sixth-floor room in the Radisson Hotel Old Town Alexandria on Friday morning watching the Potomac River slog southward. The sludge-colored water, relentlessly dredging the bedrock of the river channel by a handful of millimeters each year, is doing so at breakneck speed compared with the progress of the hands crawling around the face of my Rolex. It’s been six hours since I awoke at four thirty-seven this morning. We’re meeting Michelle and her parents for lunch in a little more than an hour. Alexandria was deemed a neutral location for today’s upcoming duel. Brittany and I flew in last night to avoid flight delays from a weather system tracking up the Eastern Seaboard.
I’ve only seen Michelle once in passing since she walked out of our Atlanta home over a year ago with a suitcase in each hand. Her goal today is to rip our daughter out of my life. She’ll have a fight on her hands to do so, but I’d be a fool to underestimate her determination to win. My goal for today’s meeting is to get a sense of the lay of the land on which she and her father intend to fight this battle. I’m anxious to get on with it. I’m also scared to death of doing so.
Brittany is on the phone with Pat, checking in on the recuperating Deano. Why people insist on talking to dogs on the phone is beyond me; I’ve seen the bewilderment or simple disinterest of dogs when people do it. I suppose it makes us feel better. I pass the time revisiting an article about the restoration of Old Town Alexandria in a guidebook thoughtfully placed in my hotel room by the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association.
“What did Deano have to say?” I ask when Brittany ends the call.
She replies by sticking out her tongue.
I’m going stir-crazy and we have time to do a little exploring before lunch. “Do you mind walking?” I ask.
Brittany is looking forward to seeing her mother and grandparents but isn’t thrilled with their determination to revisit the child custody arrangements. I let her know that they want to do so, without revealing the specific details of her mother’s lawsuit. I doubt they care what she thinks. If they did, they would have discussed it with her. They would have invited her along today, too. I do care what she thinks about this and spent hours debating the merits of bringing her along. I know that the Rice family will be unhappy that I have, so I’ve tried to figure out how I can position this to satisfy them. Talk about an exercise in futility; I’ve seldom if ever done anything to Prescott Rice’s satisfaction. I finally fell back on a pithy idea I’d stumbled across in a fortune cookie or something: “If you repeatedly hit yourself over the head with a baseball bat, you will feel better when you stop.” Dealing with Michelle and her father is no different, so I stopped agonizing over what they’d think about my bringing Brittany and—voila!—I felt better instantly.
Once outside, we turn left on North Fairfax Street and find ourselves marching straight into the teeth of a raw wind whipping off the water. Hunched against the howling tempest, we start toward the center of Old Town Alexandria. Cobblestone streets cut between rows of restored colonial architecture. Too much of this suffers from an effort to achieve a certain patriotic colonial charm calculated to reel in tourists by the thousands. The presence of pizza parlors and coffee shops flanked by modern retail outlets and kitschy antique shops sounds a false note. Yet there’s no disputing the rarity of the architectural masterpieces dotting the landscape—solid-brick buildings decorated with chunky ornamental accents and trim uniformly painted white. The buildings press close, set back a foot or two at most from the narrow brick sidewalk. Steps jut out from front doors to further impinge on the walkway.
When Brittany slips her arm through mine, I glance at her and wince at the sight of her rosy cheeks and runny nose. She dabs at her nose with a gloved hand and grins. “Great idea to get out and enjoy the outdoors, Dad!”
I grin back and shrug in a “What can I say?” gesture, then cut west in search of succor from the wind along tree-lined residential streets. The charm the business denizens of Alexandria have striven so hard to fabricate elsewhere is evident on these blocks. There’s a timeless elegance here, something solid that isn’t found in suburbs such as the Wildercliff development we had inhabited in Atlanta and others like it scattered from sea to shining sea.
I enjoy the ambience of the buildings for several blocks, then square my shoulders and head for King Street. The guidebook trumpets this strip as the “heart” of Old Town. When we turn the corner onto North Royal Street, my eyes settle immediately on Gadsby’s Tavern and Museum, a pair of conjoined classic red-brick Georgian colonial structures. Gadsby’s isn’t exactly neutral ground; it’s a Rice
