"Dillon can you hand me those papers over there on the shelf?" Ned asked not looking up from the papers he was reading. I got up from where I was filing the recent merger into the computer hard drive and got the papers.
"Was this merger like a really big step up for ELQ?" I asked as I handed him the papers. I hadn't been working here too long, about six months and I was picking up on things quickly but there was still a lot of stuff that I had no clue about.
"Yea, you could say that. We just partnered a huge investor so things are going pretty well right now. You almost done getting that all into the data system?" He asked pointing at the computer on the other side of his desk.
"Yea, it is all being transfered right now." I said as I was interrupted by a buzzing noise.
"Mr. Quartermaine there is someone here to see you." Ned's secretary said over the intercom.
"Tell whoever it is that I am busy right now and ask them to please wait." Ned said as he scratched his head and looked back down at the papers in front of him.
"Actually it is for the other Mr. Quartermaine. She says it is improtant." His secretary knew who Georgie was and she would usually just send her back without bothering to tell us, so it couldn't have been Gerogie. I just looked at Ned and shrugged my shoulders. Before Ned could tell her to send the person back we could hear some mumbling and shouting going on outside before the double doors to Ned's office flew open and my mom stood there with the secretary quickly running up behind her.
"I'm sorry Mr. Quartermaine, I couldn't stop her." She said apologetically.
"That's all right. I'm suprised you kept her out that long." Ned said as his secretary looked at all of us before shutting the doors behind her as she went back out to her desk in the front lobby.
"Oh my babies, how are you? Look at you two working together." Mom said as she walked towards me with her arms outstretched, but before she could hug me I quickly dodged her. "What was that for?" She asked sternly.
"What? You think you are just going to show up after being gone for three years and expect me to welcome you with open arms?" I asked bitterly as she looked at me and then looked at Ned.
"What did you do to him, why is he talking to me like that? Did you and your grandfather fill his head with lies about what a bad person I am?" She asked as she walked closer to him.
"They didn't tell me nothing. Well nothing that I didn't already know or haven't already figured out." I said as I sat back down at the computer and finished what little needed to be done to complete the data transfer.
"What is your problem? I haven't seen you in three years and when I come back to get you, you are going to talk to me like this?" She asked as she put one hand over her chest dramatically and the other on her hip.
"That right there IS my problem. I haven't seen you in three years and you haven't once called me or returned my calls in the last year and a half. Wait what do you mean 'get me'?" I asked as I stood back up.
"Oh baby, you know how much I hate phones." She said trying to cover herself and make an excuse for not calling. "I got an offer to go back to Italy and I want you to come with, we are leaving in the morning." She said excitedly, like everything I had just said went completely in one ear and out the other. Which it probably had.
"What, I'm not going anywhere with you. I'm staying here." I yelled as I started pacing back and forth.
"What do you mean, you're staying here. What is there here that you can't get in Italy?" She asked with a laugh like that was the most rediculous thing she had ever heard.
"A family. That is what I have here, a family." I said as I stopped pacing and just stared at her.
"Honey, I am your family....." She started but Ned cut her off.
"Excuse me mother? He said as he looked at her.
"I'm his family, I am all he's got." She yelled.
"Don't pull this with me, Dillon has become a part of the Quartermaines since you just dropped him off here to go do your own thing. He has a life here, he has his family here. And I'll be damned if you are going to come back here and take him away, besides he is 20 years old now." I was so glad Ned had said something. I was so shell-shocked by her last comment that I didn't know what to say.
"Is this how you feel Dillon?" She asked as she turned to look at me, fuming over what Ned had just said.
"Yes, yes that is exactly how I feel. I have friends, I have family and I have a fiance here and I am about to have a family of my own. This is where I belong. I'm not leaving." I said calmly with my head in my hands as I sat in one of Ned's over-stuffed leather chairs.
"What did you just say? A fiance? A family of your own?" She said as all the color drained from her face.
"Yes, I'm engaged and if you would have returned my hundreds of calls over the past half a year you would know that within a month I will have a little baby girl." I said my bad temper vanishing at the thought of Gerogie and our baby.
"He's joking right?" She said as she turned to Ned.
"No he's not joking, God mother are you really that insnsitive?" He said as he too sat down in his chair.
"Who is this girl? What does she want from you?" She yelled as she threw her purse into the chair beside me and walked over to the little bar in the corner of Ned's office. Pouring some kind of hard liguor into a glass and drinking it all in one swallow.
"Her name is Gerogie and she doesn't want anything." I said getting angry once more.
"Georgie? Georgie? What kind of name is Georgie? Who are her parents?" She asked as she poured another class of whatever she was drinking. Ned got up and walked over to her taking the cup out of her hands.
"No more. Her parents are Felicia Jones and Mac Scorpio, well Mac is her step-father her real father is Frisco Jones." He said as he took all the liguor and put it into the mini fridge and locked it.
"THAT girl? Oh Dillon you really could have done better, well maybe not in this town. But God she probably just wants your money. I guess I should have just taken you with me. At least you wouldn't be in this mess right now." She said not knowing to what extent her words hurt me, but knowing non-the-less that they hurt.
"If you are going to sit here and talk like that about Gerogie and or Dillon then I will have you escorted out of here. You have no right to come back after all those years and run your mouth. Now you either shut the hell up or leave." Ned said as he backed her into the corner.
"You will not have me thrown out of here, but I will stop. I'm not waisting my breath on this situation anymore. I've said my piece." She said as Ned back up. She held her chin up and she tugged on her outfit trying to straighten it out. "But I will tell you one thing Dillon, if you stay with this girl and realize down the road that she is just out to get your money, don't come to me thinking I will help you out." She said as she stared coldly at me.
"Dillon, would you like the rest of the day off. I need to talk to our mother alone." Ned said as he looked over at me.
"Don't you need me to help with things around here." I growled as I didn't break my stare with her.
"I've got it covered. Go home and tell Gerogie I will stop by later with Kristina. If you need anything, just call." He said as he lowered his voice.
"She lives at the mansion now too?" Mom asked horrified.
"No, I'm living at her parents house." I said knowing that I had just delivered a low blow to her ego. "I'll see you later Ned, thanks. If you need me back later just call and I'll come back. Good luck." I said as I walked out of his office completely ignoring my mom. I should have known that she would have reacted that way. I'm starting to realize that maybe not having talked to her in so long left me time enough to realize just the kind of person she really was. Time to realize for myself that she never really cared about me, I was just extra luggage she had carried around for 17 years. Not anymore, though. Now she knew, and now I could go on and let her decide where she wanted to fall in this whole equation.