With all of the drama going on with Davis, I have almost completely forgotten about my escort date with my own blood father the next day. But thankfully, I had put a reminder on my phone so I get ready on time. Josie is nervous to be left alone but I remind her that Davis isn't an issue anymore. He was detained yesterday after they raided their home and found the drugs that I'd planted.

The restaurant that we're meeting at is fancy so I have to dress up, but I don't wear my normal type of sexy dress that I wear on my dates with clients because I don't want to look sexy for my father. I find a maxi dress in my closet that goes down to the floor and it has a halter top so there's no cleavage either.

I leave Josie in the apartment watching TV with a pizza on the counter for when she wants dinner and I take the metro to the restaurant. I look at my phone and see that I'll make it just in time. I'm nervous though because I don't know what to expect from this. I don't know if he knows who I am but if he doesn't, I can't figure out why he would ask for me specifically. How would he even get my name?

I try not to think too much about it. I'm going, I can't turn back now. I just need to see what he wants and then I can go. He's probably already paid so it's not like he can get a refund when he finds out that he's not getting laid. This should be fine. And it's in a public place. He's a public figure so there's no way that he'd create a big scene or anything.

When I get to the restaurant, I tell them that I'm with Silas Barkley and they take me to the table where he is already sitting. My father. I recognize him from the TV but he looks much different than the man that I remember hanging out with when I was eight. His hair is gray now, he's getting wrinkly and he's rounder. He has the same eyes as me, and the same nose. I wish that I didn't look like him at all. I don't want anything of his, not his eyes or his nose.

"You're Samantha?" He asks me as I'm sitting down at the table.

Usually, I'm very smiley and flirty on these kinds of dates but I can't even get myself to smile at him for just one polite smile. I'm so weighed down that I'm almost finding it hard to move.

"I am," I say smoothly. I haven't talked to this man face to face in fourteen years and I was hoping that I wouldn't ever have to talk to him again. I don't have anything to say to him. And what could he possibly have to say to me? "What can I do for you tonight, Senator Barkley?"

Before he can answer, the waiter comes over to get our drink orders. They have a full bar here so I say, "I would like vodka. I don't care what kind, I would just like a lot of it."

Silas orders gin.

"When I talked to the agency, they said that I spent a fair amount of money on a night with you last week," Silas explains to me after the waiter is gone. "I assume that it was my son that was with you."

"That's what this is about?" I ask him with raised eyebrows. "Because your son is buying escorts with your credit card?"

"I want to make sure that you can be trusted," He explains. "I don't know you, and this could spin into a scandal just because Jay needed to get his rocks off, if you say anything to anybody."

"I didn't sleep with your son," I inform him. "So I don't have a story to tell. All of Jill's girls are trustful though, we are not going to lose our jobs just to sell a story to a reporter, so if reassurance is all that you needed, I'll go now."

"You didn't sleep with him?" He questions as our drinks arrive. I won't be able to get through this dinner without an extreme amount of alcohol; I start drinking right away.

"Another one of the girls did though so don't worry, you can still be proud of your slutty son," I assure him. The more that I sit here and talk to this man, the angrier I get and so the next part just comes out and I can't help it. Angry word vomit. "It's just that incest really isn't my thing, so I gave the job to another girl."

"What?" He looks confused.

I wasn't planning on telling him who I am, but I guess the look on his face will be priceless when he realizes that I'm his daughter. And then when he connects the dots that his daughter is a prostitute, the kind of lady that he likes to fuck. "I know that it's been fourteen years, Daddy, but you should still recognize your own fucking daughter, don't you think?"

And there it is. His eyes widen, his body tenses, he's completely panicking. I would love to hear what's going through his mind right now but the look on his face is pretty great too.

"So if you were looking for sex tonight, that's off of the table," I add when he doesn't say anything and I drink more of my stinging vodka. "I mean, there are a lot of things that I'm willing to do for money but blood relatives are not one of those things."

"Shit," He says under his breath. I give him some time to process what's going on. I wonder if he even remembers my name. He then looks back up at me and says, "So what do you want?"

"What do I want?" I repeat what he said because I'm confused by the question. "I don't want anything from you. Your son came to me, and then you came to me, I never asked for any of this. Me and Casey are doing just fine on our own. Casey is the little baby that you abandoned, in case you forgot his name."

"On your own," He says slowly. "Where's your mother?"

"I wouldn't know."

"What happened?"

What happened since the last time that I saw my father? Well, the last time that I saw him was when my mother had moved us out to D.C. just to be closer to Silas. She had come to his office, brought me with her, and when she told him that we were living here now, in the same city as his real life with his real love and his real children, he got really mad. He went off on her and that was the last straw for my mom.

What happened was that this man was cheating on his wife with an unstable woman for a very long time. He had monthly trips to our town in Virginia because it was in his district and my mom worked at the hotel that he stayed in, which is how they met. And once a month for ten years, they'd sleep together. Even after she tricked him into getting her pregnant, they continued their affair after I was born. Obviously, because they had Casey too.

What happened is that when he went off on my mother, telling her that he would never love her or her children ever, we went back to the new house that she'd bought.

What happened is that she then tried to kill herself but THANKFULLY, her eight-year-old daughter was there to find her in a pool of her own blood on the kitchen floor. She was still pregnant but they were able to induce labor to save Casey's life. She was sent off to a mental hospital, I was shipped off with Casey to Cynthia and Davis's foster home. That's what happened.

"What happened is that you couldn't keep it in your pants and so here I am," I respond to him just to keep things simple because I don't want to get into the whole story of my mom's attempted suicide. "And my mom went off the deep end so I don't know where she is."

"Why are you still in the city?" He asks me. "Not that I..."

"Lots of horny politicians bored with their marriages," I answer him. "Which is the jackpot for somebody like me. I'm not here to blast you or ruin your life with a scandal or anything. I've got more important things to worry about. So now that everything's cleared up, I think that we're done here."

"Let me write you a check," Silas quickly insists as I'm finishing the vodka that I'd ordered. The waiter comes back to get our food order but I don't get anything because I'm sure that I can get out of here pretty soon.

"You pay Jill directly, not me."

"Not for... this. Just to help out," he suggests as he pulls a checkbook out of his briefcase and he starts writing something down.

"I don't want your money," I tell him quickly. "I mean, I want what I'm owed for tonight but nothing else."

"Eleanor," He says my name for the first time, proving that he does actually know what it is. It's actually really surprising to me. "I have money. Where are you living? Do you need help with rent? Or school?"

"No," I say stubbornly. "I didn't ask for this, to find you or tell you how miserable things are. I came because I needed the money for being here, not your sympathy money or hush money. I hate you for abandoning us, you hate me for existing. So I'm going to leave and we'll pretend like this never happened."

He tries again to hand me the check that he just wrote out but I get up and leave the table without looking back. I get out of the restaurant and walk around the block to where there's this little park so that I can get some air before I head back to the apartment.

I know that it's not all his fault, but I still blame him a lot for how my childhood went. If he was there, if he tried at all to reach out to his own children, maybe I wouldn't have had to grow up so quickly. Maybe I wouldn't have been perpetually afraid of the man living in the next room. Maybe my life would have just been a little bit easier.

And I don't even mean like accepting us into his family, telling his wife about us or anything like that. But he could have sent money before now. He could have found us, could have gotten us out of that foster home. He's a senator, he has a lot of power so I'm sure he could have done something.

But it's too late now and I'm not interested in his money anymore because the bad things already happened. The things that could have been stopped are already done and the money, or his attention, won't make anything better now.

I get to the bench and sit down just to get some air as I try to calm down. All of the what-ifs floating through my mind right now are just making me unbelievably angry at everybody who has ever had a part in how terrible my childhood was. Not for me, really, but it pisses me off that Casey couldn't grow up well either.

And that kid is the sweetest, kindest, smartest kid ever and he doesn't deserve all of the crap that has been thrown at us over the years.

But it's not all Silas's fault. He never wanted us. And all these years, he thought that we were living with our mother so it's not like he actively let us rot in that foster home. That's the rational thing to think right now, but I'm not feeling rational. I'm feeling angry at the world.

He did continue to sleep with my mother even after she had tricked him into fathering her first child, though, so in reality, I think that he does have a lot of blame in this. He knew how fragile she was and how she was so in love with him and willing to do anything to prove that. And if he stopped after he got her pregnant the first time, Casey wouldn't be here. And if Casey wasn't here, I wouldn't be either.

But then again, the world sure would lose something great if Casey was never born. He'll probably cure cancer or something when he gets older.

Anyway, it doesn't matter whose fault it is that I ended up in that hellscape of a foster home. What matters now is that I got through it, I got Casey through it, and we're okay now. I'm strong, I'm tough, I'm fearless because of how I grew up. It was shitty and I sure would have liked a different childhood but that doesn't matter because it happened and here I am. I can't continue to stew about the past and about who is to blame, I just have to look forward.

Think of the future.

And in my future, I'm going on a date on Saturday. I get to see Casey too because I asked him to come home so that he can stay with Josie while I'm out with Micah and so that I can tell him that I'm legally getting custody of him.

The past was pretty bad but the right now is actually pretty alright. Casey is happy, going to a good school. I'm beginning a real relationship with Micah, who is really nice. And having Josie around is nice because she's such a sweet girl. And I'm saving her from the childhood that I had. I get to the be hero that I always wanted.

Not the hero that I needed, because I didn't need a hero. I was my own hero, but Josie doesn't have to be. I got through it because I had somebody to fight for, I was fighting for Casey and not just myself. But Josie doesn't have that kind of motivation.

And so once I get myself to calm down and I stop thinking about my shitty father, I get off of the bench and I go home. Because my 'right now' is a pretty good one and I think that maybe it can get even better from here.