Chapter 4 - The Evaluation of Victoria
Three weeks later, I was sitting in a quiet, high-end cafe near Grand Central Station during my lunch hour when a shadow fell over my table. I looked up from my tablet to see Victoria standing there, her coat soaked from the winter sleet outside. She looked different. The polished, careless confidence of her Whitmore days had been replaced by a tense, drawn look around her eyes. Her designer handbag looked scuffed at the corners.
"Can I sit down?" she asked, her voice tight.
"It’s a public cafe," I said, not moving my briefcase from the opposite chair. She took the hint and sat on the low stool beside the table instead.
"Dad is ruined, Francis," she said immediately, leaning forward so the people at the next table wouldn't hear. "They’re forcing him into an early retirement with a forfeiture of his corporate stock options. Mom is selling her jewelry. And my dean called me yesterday. If my tuition balance isn't cleared by Friday, I won't be allowed to walk at my own graduation in May."
"Then you’ll have to take out a student loan, Victoria," I said, taking a sip of my espresso. "Like millions of other students do every single year. Including the ones who don't have a new Honda with a red bow on the hood."
"You don't get it!" she hissed, her fingers digging into the edge of the table. "The interest rates are ridiculous because Dad can't co-sign for me anymore. My credit history is empty because everything was under his name! I’ve worked for four years for that degree, Francis! I deserve to finish!"
"You deserve what you pay for, Victoria," I said, setting my cup down with a soft click. "That was the rule Harold established in our living room. Have you forgotten? He said it with a very practical smile."
"You're being cruel," she whispered, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. "I didn't choose to have them favor me, Francis. I was just living my life. I was seventeen when they bought me that car. Was I supposed to say no? Was I supposed to refuse the tuition because my twin sister didn't get it?"
"No, you wasn't supposed to say no to the car, Victoria," I said, my voice dropping into a quiet, chilling register that made her straighten up. "But when you saw my aunt's text message on Mom's phone—the one where she called me 'poor Francis' and said I didn't stand out—you didn't say anything to comfort me. When I was studying by the light of a broken laptop till three in the morning while your room was silent, you didn't offer to share your workspace. You didn't choose the favoritism, but you absolutely consumed it without a single thought for the person who was starving right next to you."
She sat back, the tears finally spilling over her cheeks. She looked at her hands, her shoulders shaking slightly. "If I don't get this degree... everything I did at Whitmore... all the connections I made... they won't mean anything. I’ll have to move back to Columbus and find a retail job just to pay off the housing fees."
I looked at her for a long moment. I saw the girl who used to whisper with me on the back porch when we were ten years old, back before the magazine clippings of mansions and expensive colleges had turned her into a stranger. She was a creation of my father’s vanity, and now that his empire of smoke and mirrors had collapsed, she was the one left holding the bill.
I pulled a leather card case from my blazer pocket, took out a personal check I had signed that morning, and slid it across the table.
The amount written on the line was exactly the cost of her final semester's tuition. Not a penny more.
"This isn't a gift, Victoria," I said as she stared at the paper with her mouth open. "This is a contract. You will finish your degree at Whitmore. You will graduate. And then you will spend the next five years paying this back to my investment account with a three-percent fixed interest rate. Marcus Vance at my firm has already drawn up the legal agreement. Sign it, or leave the paper on the table."
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She reached for the check, her hand shaking. "Why are you doing this if you hate us so much?"
"I don't hate you, Victoria," I said, standing up and buttoning my blazer. "Hate is an emotional investment, and like Harold said, I care about the return. I’m funding your education because unlike our father, I actually know how to spot an asset that has potential if it’s forced to work for its keep. See you at graduation."
