Chapter 75 – Harry's Wisdom
"Hey Leon, you seen Torrie today?" Vince asked his friend.
"Yeah, she's in the back talking to Letty." Leon answered. He was sort of mad at Torrie for her part in what had happened to Chris so he wasn't going to cover for her.
"She been here long?"
"Bout half an hour." Leon answered.
"Great." Vince sighed. He hadn't wanted Torrie to talk to Letty before he could talk to Torrie. He walked out back and Letty was sitting on the couch alone with a book.
"Where is she?" Vince asked bluntly.
"Who?" Letty asked, one eyebrow cocked, infuriating Letty cool face firmly in place.
"Torrie." Vince growled.
"Haven't seen her." Letty answered blithely and went back to her book.
Vince snatched the book away.
"Leon already told me she's here talking to you and Dom's car's out front."
Letty damned Leon to hell in her head even as she formulated answers.
"I took the 8 here to change the oil and Leon musta been mistaken." Letty looked up at Vince, daring him to challenge her.
"Bullshit. Where is she?"
"What part of I don't know was hard for you to get Vince?"
"Don't do this Letty. I'm in no mood to put up with your shit."
"Then get the fuck out my face Vince." Letty yelled. "I said I don't know."
"And you're fucken lying to me."
"Like you never told a lie before..." Letty sighed. She was hinting about all the times Vince had lied to her to keep Dom's cheating a secret.
"Letty, I'm sorry about all that ok? I really see how wrong it was of me now that I've thought about it. But I really need to talk to Torrie. So could you tell me where you're hiding her?"
"She left ok." Letty admitted, figuring there wasn't much Vince could do about it.
"The car's still here." Vince stalked toward the office.
"She took mine so I could do the oil change on Dom's." Letty thought that made sense. She wasn't willing to totally abandon the story she'd created.
"She knew I was here and ran didn't she? And you let her take your car to throw me off." Vince was smarter then most gave him credit for.
"So what if I did? She's all hurt and confused and I didn't want her to haveta fight you if she didn't have to right away."
"It's not your decision to make." Vince snarled.
"I know where she's comin from, remember? Besides, she's a big girl and if she don't want to see you then she don't have to. It's really not your decision to make either." Letty stood up, ready to take Vince on over the whole thing if she had to. "You wanna fight with me about it Coyote? Cause I can take you."
Her attitude made Vince even angrier. He was even more determined to talk to Torrie right away because Letty had told him not to.
"I'm going to go find that girl. Now I'm just looking for a purple Nissan instead of a silver Mazda is all." Vince turned to walk out of the garage.
"You hurt her and I'll hurt you. That's a promise Vince." Letty wouldn't back down. Plus she figured Torrie was really gone and she really didn't have any idea where Torrie had gone to.
Vince sighed. He turned back around to face Letty.
"No matter how much she doesn't want to talk about all that happened she must know we're gonna have to."
"She does, but she wants to do it on her own time."
Vince nodded. He understood but he wanted to do it on his own time too. He headed off to try and find Torrie.
Letty slapped Leon off the back of his head.
"Don't interfere in shit you don't understand fool." She wasn't really mad, just wanted to teach Leon his lesson now.
"She needs to own up to it Let, and you letting her take off isn't helping her in the long run." Leon answered wisely and went on with his work.
Letty looked at Leon in shock, because he was ultimately right. But she didn't have to like it one bit. She pulled a nasty face at Leon.
"Yeah, well, it's none of your business neither and you didn't have to tell Vince she was here. Did you not here me say she wasn't here? You made me look like a liar too fool! Plus Torrie'll talk to everyone, when she feels like it. Would you have wanted to deal with shit like this when you felt like you were going to die?"
Leon gave Letty a look like he hadn't thought of things along the lines of how it would make Letty look for Vince to know she'd lied to him and how Torrie would feel to talk to anyone about how badly she'd behaved over the 24 hours previous.
"I guess I coulda just let things work out on there own." Leon admitted, still working on the car he was fixing.
Letty nodded yes, that this would have been a good idea and went back to her work as well. The mess of their team was just going to have to work itself out however it would, but that didn't mean that Letty couldn't try to play things into Torrie's favour.
*~*
Torrie tore off down the road the garage was on and after a few seconds of driving straight she took a hard left, breaking the rear tires of Letty's Nissan loose and skidding wildly around the corner. She was very glad that Letty's car was so similar to her own. She knew she had to get some corners and distance between her and Vince or he was going to find her. Letty's car wasn't exactly inconspicuous. Torrie knew if she just drove away from the garage Vince would find out she was gone and would come after her. Thus her wild flight around corners at double the sane amount of speed to take them at.
She took another right and then stopped for a red light. It killed her to stop at all, she wanted to run the red but she didn't dare. So instead she just sat there gunning the idling engine, waiting for her chance to squeal off the line.
She didn't know where to go. Vince knew where her father lived so if she ran to Harry's house Vince would find her easily. She could go to her uncle's but Dave wasn't likely to have any advice for her. Well, he might but then she'd have to admit how badly she'd behaved to him and while she was willing to own up to it to her team she wasn't going to go around telling her whole family.
She really wanted to talk to her dad about it but she knew going to his house was asking to be caught. The light went green and she burned out the tires taking off, smoke billowing up from the rear of the car.
First gear, still panicked with no idea what to do.
Second gear, still trying to figure out what to do.
Third gear, thinking of running away to Mexico.
Fourth gear, speed causing adrenaline to flow.
Before she could hit fifth in the city limits she had a brilliant idea. She could easily go to 'The Racer's Edge', stash Letty's car in the back and then hide in her office. Or rather her dad's office. She doubted he'd mind, plus he might even be there. She knew that he might be disappointed in her for how she'd acted but ultimately he'd take her side and protect her from Vince for as long as she wanted him too.
She turned the car toward her store and her head felt marginally better with that worry off her mind. She found herself singing along to Letty's CD. Things were going to be ok. But she was going to have to do some serious explaining. And this time she might even have to break down and apologize.
She didn't do it very often. But when she did you could bet on it being sincere. If she didn't think she should or had done anything to apologize for then she wouldn't. She'd just pull an arrogant face and walk away from the whole situation. But if she did that this time the whole house with the exception of Letty would hate her. And even Letty might get mad at her if she acted like a totally spoiled brat.
She pulled into the rear of the store and ran up to the back door. Using her code she walked in and pushed the button that would open the nearest bay door. She got back into Letty's car, drove it in and cut the motor then closed the door. She then walked up to the window overlooking the customer area, checking for Toretto's. She was glad she had because there was Vince.
He was talking to her father. Figuring she had a few minutes till he left, Torrie snuck carefully to her office and called up the garage.
"DT." Leon answered.
"May I speak to Letty please?" Torrie tried to disguise her voice so that Leon wouldn't know it was her.
"Yeah, just a second. Letty! Phone!" Leon called.
Letty came to the phone.
"'Lo?" Letty asked.
"Hey Let."
"Hey girl, you got away I guess?"
"Yeah, I'm at the store. Catch is so is Vince. But I'm hiding in the back and your car's in the back bay. So he can't see it but it could be a while before I can bring it back to you."
"Don't worry 'bout it. You going home to the house tonight? Or are you gonna stay with your dad for awhile?"
"I didn't think that far ahead yet but I'm thinking I'll go home as soon as I talk to my dad and calm down a bit. I think I need to formulate a plan of attack on the whole situation first."
"What'dya mean by that?" Letty asked, curious about what Torrie was up to.
"Well, I'm gonna have to say something at least about how I over reacted to what Chris said. I don't know if it should involve saying sorry or not but it's gonna have to involve saying I was wrong to say what I did. Then I'll have to have some sort of private talk with Vince about the whole evening of 'sin' we had. Then I have to talk to Dom on the phone. It's going to be one hell of an unpleasant night."
"Sounds like hell in California." Letty replied.
"Thanks for the encouragement." Torrie sighed.
"You already knew it was gonna suck girl. And you likely didn't help anything by running away. Vince knows you took off so you could avoid him and he isn't happy. And then I told him I hadn't seen you and Leon had to go and tell him that we spend time talking so he even knows I lied to cover for you."
"That's just super." Torrie replied sarcastically.
"So he's pissed off at both of us." Letty answered, then paused before continuing. "You know you and I could both go stay with Rome. He's got room..." Letty trailed off.
"Yeah, that'd go over real good with Dominic." Torrie snapped. "Man I'm sorry Let. It's just that this mess expands more every fricken second."
"I know. I know. I'll come home and face my music too. We should arrive together. Let's face it, we aren't gonna get to eat supper at home tonight. Wanna meet at Cora's for supper, create the battle plan, than go home at the same time?"
"Letty, you have the best ideas. Meet you at Cora's at 6?"
"Perfect. See you there." Torrie hung up the phone and as she did the door to the office opened. Her father's frame filled the doorway.
Harry jumped when he saw Torrie sitting in his chair. He'd had no idea she was around.
"Princess, when did you get here? I just had your friend here looking for you and I told him you weren't around because I didn't know you were."
"That's ok Dad. I didn't want him to know I was. I'm sort of hiding from them right now."
"Why's that Princess?" Harry asked, worried look appearing on his face.
"I did something really stupid yesterday." And with that Torrie started to cry. She tried not to but she couldn't help it. She didn't want her dad to think she was just trying to get his pity but she was so confused about how to feel about everything and how to go on from the point she found herself at that she just started to cry.
Harry walked up to her and held his arms open. Torrie stood up and allowed her father to hold her tight.
"It can't be as bad as all this Tor. What happened?"
"Well, I found something in New York that made me think Dom was cheating on me." Torrie started at the beginning so her dad would know where she'd been coming from.
"That bastard." Harry looked livid.
"Well, I said I thought he was. It turns out he wasn't. He just had some girl get all over him and before he could do anything about it she'd already gotten some of her makeup on his shirt. I found the shirt. But he didn't really do anything with her."
"You believe that?" Harry bit out, clearly he didn't believe that at all. "I mean you think he didn't tell Letty stories like that when he cheated on her?"
"I know he did daddy, but the thing is he also always told Vince the truth and since Vince confirmed Dom's story I really believe him. But I didn't wait for him to explain in New York, I just ran away and came home."
"Understandable." Harry said and sat down, inviting her to sit on his lap, an offer she accepted.
"That might have been but what I did next wasn't really." Torrie looked chagrined.
Harry waited for her to continue.
"I was sitting at the airport being miserable. I was going to call you for a ride when Vince showed up to get me. We drove home. He tried to convince me that Dom didn't do anything and he sort of succeeded. He was so good to me on the drive home. But then Vince always is good to me. But even still I decided to go out and party to forget that night anyway." Torrie figured she as going to have to tell her father the PG toned down version of the story. "I called up Lex, she said she'd go out with me so I got ready and went to go. I just wanted to go have a good time. But Vince caught me on the way out of the house and decided that I shouldn't be out on my own. He told me he was coming with me. I didn't want him to at all. I told him he was too scruffy to come out with me dressed the way he was and he went to change."
"Well, I agree with him. If you were still feeling upset then you had no business driving anywhere. Especially not the way you drive."
"Well. That would have been the plan, for him to take me where I wanted to go. But while he was gone to pretend he wasn't a grease monkey and clean up his clothes his girlfriend Chris came into the living room where I was waiting and started giving me dirty looks. She always does that stuff and normally I just brush it off. But I was having a seriously bad night. I didn't want Vince to come with me, I didn't know what to believe about Dom. I was just in a totally bad mood and the fact that Vince was treating me like a child who couldn't make a decision about what she wanted to do instead of a 22 year old girl who could really do whatever she wanted was pissing me off. So I snapped."
"What does the girl do again? And what do you mean snapped?"
"Well, she just doesn't speak to me and every time she looks at me it's just mean. We don't know each other but she decided not to like me the minute we met. I think it has something to do with the fact that she likes Vince and Vince likes me more then she thinks is appropriate. Or that's what I've been telling myself. I think there's more to it then that but I didn't want to think about it. She just didn't like me because I'm me I think."
"Because you're you?"
"Yeah, like she took one look at me and decided I was a bitch just by how I looked. And I don't get it. I was wearing Dom's shirt and a dirty old pair of my garage shorts. My hair was all over the place and I was in my bare feet. I wasn't looking stuck up, I acted nice to her. I felt sorry for her when she first came to live with us, she'd just left some abusive relationship with Vince's help and she looked all pathetic and stuff. But she was mean to me right from the first time we saw each other."
"Well, some people are just destined not to get along Tor. There's not a hell of a lot you can do about it."
"I guess but I didn't take it lying down Daddy. I kind of told a story about how V came to be called Coyote because I wanted to hurt her. It wasn't very well done of me but I honestly didn't feel sorry about it because she really hurt me too. So I didn't say anything to her. I wouldn't tell Vince I was sorry either because I wasn't. But Vince and I made up. We were bound to. But me and Chris never did and we spent the rest of the time just giving each other nasty looks."
"Well, that's maybe not the nicest thing I've ever heard Princess but I mean it's not like anyone would expect you to be all nice to the girl if she shoots you nasty looks and makes it clear she doesn't like you all the time. If all you did was give her nasty looks I don't understand what the big deal is."
"Well that was all before I went to visit Dom. When I came back and I was all confused about what was going on and how I felt and I was waiting for Vince to force his company upon me she came into the room and started giving me these dirty looks again. But in the state I was in I didn't just give her one back and let it go. I asked her what the hell she was looking at."
"Again not the nicest thing I've ever heard but not horrible either."
"Ok, but then she answered me. Her answer was 'not much'."
"Well, that's rude." Harry said and stroked Torrie's hair back out of her face as she sat curled up in his lap. "Maybe she's just jealous of more then your relationship with Vince. Maybe she's jealous of how pretty you are?"
Even if she was 22 he was very happy to have his little girl back. He'd missed being her hero while he'd been gone and then when he'd come back and found her living with Toretto one of his biggest worries had been that the younger, stronger man had taken over in her life as her hero.
"Yeah it was rude. And she's not ugly. It's not like she's hard looking or anything. She's pretty enough. Especially since she's been living with us and got some clothes that fit her and stuff. But I proved once again that the tongue of an Italian woman is sharper then most."
"How so? And why is it Italian that makes your tongue sharp? How do you know it isn't the colleen in you?"
Torrie actually laughed at that.
"Well, mom was one of the most polite, perfect women I've ever seen so I just assumed that since I've seen your temper and my own that mine is more like yours then mom's. I can't imagine mom blowing up the way I did last night."
"That's true. You got that temper from me." Harry chuckled, than sobered thinking about how Torrie's mom had been far from perfect too. But Torrie remembered her with a child's memory and she'd idolized her mom in her heart. Harry knew there was no sense trying to change that perception since his wife was dead and wasn't coming back. Torrie might as well keep her good memories he figured. "So what did you say to the girl?"
"I told her if she wanted to see a girl who wasn't much she needed to go look in a mirror cause I was the one dating Dominic not her and not to mention that I could have Vince if I wanted him as well."
Harry looked on in mild shock. While his Princess did have a temper she was normally such an easy going girl. He really didn't believe she'd said what she was telling him she had. But that just told him how upset she'd been by the whole situation with Dominic. He hugged her close for a second. He figured they could forgive her an outburst after she'd thought she'd caught the boy she'd wanted for most of her life cheating on her.
"And then she told me I was too skinny..."
Harry cut her off.
"You are too skinny!"
"Ok Ok. Like I don't hear that enough from Dom. It's the stress I've been under lately."
"Ok. Sorry to interrupt." Harry knew Torrie had issues with herself when she got stressed. She tended to worry about whatever was bothering her to the point of forgetting to eat and even missing appointments if she was really upset. Harry let his daughter continue her story.
Torrie ticked Chris's points about her off on her fingers.
"Too skinny, too pale, dress like a whore, and then she told me I was such a bitch it was no wonder that Dom took off on me for a month. Which in the state I was in sounded like 'it's no wonder Dom cheated on you 'cause you're such a bitch'. So I told her that she wasn't anything to anyone around the house, that when I told Letty what she said about Letty and I being skanky whores Let was likely to kill her and that Dom would get rid of her as soon as I told him what she said. Oh but before I told her all that stuff I slapped her across the mouth. Then when I was done I took off at a dead run."
"Victoria Colleen! That is not how I raised you! That's going too far. You hit another person?"
"I know Daddy. My life is such a mess. I'm so sorry for how I handled it. But everything is messed up. I don't know if Dom's mad at me. I know Vince is. Letty thinks I over reacted but that I should get to handle things my own way. I'm sure Mia hates me and I'll never get along with Chris now for as long as she's around."
Torrie started to sob in honest again. She didn't know what to do or where to turn now that it seemed even her dad was mad at her.
"I want mom! Mom would know what to do."
"Oh princess. Mom likely would know what to do. But mom's gone. So I guess you'n I'll have to figure it out."
"You mean you're not mad at me?"
"No. I'm not mad. I'm sort of disappointed that you behaved so badly. You're a bit old for this kind of behaviour. But I'm not mad. Just worried about you and wondering what you're going to do to fix it. I can't believe this girl called you a whore. That's really sort of going too far on her end too. But you never should have hit her Torrie. It's never right to hit another person. Not ever. I can see where you'd feel the need to tell her off but never to hit her."
Torrie threw her arms around her father's neck.
"I love you daddy."
"I love you too princess. What do you want to do for the rest of the day?"
Harry changed the subject. He figured that Torrie would want to think about something else.
"Hide here till it's time to meet Letty for supper?" Torrie asked, almost like a question, like she was waiting for permission to stay in the office. She was worried that her dad would tell her to go home right away and face the firing squad.
"If that's what you want to do Tor."
"Well, Letty and I are going to make the game plan over dinner then I'm going home. I know I was wrong but I still need some support here, you know? I have so much to answer for. But on the other hand so does Chris."
"Well, I guess she does, but you really went too far. Plus didn't you say the girl just got out of a really bad situation?"
"Well, yeah."
"Then shouldn't you give her a bit of a break."
"Maybe but then again it's been a hard year for me too."
"Yeah it has. But that should sort of make you empathize with this girl and maybe go easy on her, not use what you've been through as an excuse to act just as poorly as this Chris girl."
"Thanks Daddy. You always knew just what I needed to hear."
"You're welcome Princess. If you're going to hang around here for the rest of the afternoon make yourself useful and enter that list of stock into the computer for me would you?"
"Of course Daddy."
Torrie started to work with the computer as her father left the office. Things seemed a lot more clear to her after their chat. Her father had a point, she had been using her hard year as an excuse to try and get away with stuff she knew was wrong and she figured, on the other hand, so was Chris. It was clear the whole team had to have a talk.
"Hey Leon, you seen Torrie today?" Vince asked his friend.
"Yeah, she's in the back talking to Letty." Leon answered. He was sort of mad at Torrie for her part in what had happened to Chris so he wasn't going to cover for her.
"She been here long?"
"Bout half an hour." Leon answered.
"Great." Vince sighed. He hadn't wanted Torrie to talk to Letty before he could talk to Torrie. He walked out back and Letty was sitting on the couch alone with a book.
"Where is she?" Vince asked bluntly.
"Who?" Letty asked, one eyebrow cocked, infuriating Letty cool face firmly in place.
"Torrie." Vince growled.
"Haven't seen her." Letty answered blithely and went back to her book.
Vince snatched the book away.
"Leon already told me she's here talking to you and Dom's car's out front."
Letty damned Leon to hell in her head even as she formulated answers.
"I took the 8 here to change the oil and Leon musta been mistaken." Letty looked up at Vince, daring him to challenge her.
"Bullshit. Where is she?"
"What part of I don't know was hard for you to get Vince?"
"Don't do this Letty. I'm in no mood to put up with your shit."
"Then get the fuck out my face Vince." Letty yelled. "I said I don't know."
"And you're fucken lying to me."
"Like you never told a lie before..." Letty sighed. She was hinting about all the times Vince had lied to her to keep Dom's cheating a secret.
"Letty, I'm sorry about all that ok? I really see how wrong it was of me now that I've thought about it. But I really need to talk to Torrie. So could you tell me where you're hiding her?"
"She left ok." Letty admitted, figuring there wasn't much Vince could do about it.
"The car's still here." Vince stalked toward the office.
"She took mine so I could do the oil change on Dom's." Letty thought that made sense. She wasn't willing to totally abandon the story she'd created.
"She knew I was here and ran didn't she? And you let her take your car to throw me off." Vince was smarter then most gave him credit for.
"So what if I did? She's all hurt and confused and I didn't want her to haveta fight you if she didn't have to right away."
"It's not your decision to make." Vince snarled.
"I know where she's comin from, remember? Besides, she's a big girl and if she don't want to see you then she don't have to. It's really not your decision to make either." Letty stood up, ready to take Vince on over the whole thing if she had to. "You wanna fight with me about it Coyote? Cause I can take you."
Her attitude made Vince even angrier. He was even more determined to talk to Torrie right away because Letty had told him not to.
"I'm going to go find that girl. Now I'm just looking for a purple Nissan instead of a silver Mazda is all." Vince turned to walk out of the garage.
"You hurt her and I'll hurt you. That's a promise Vince." Letty wouldn't back down. Plus she figured Torrie was really gone and she really didn't have any idea where Torrie had gone to.
Vince sighed. He turned back around to face Letty.
"No matter how much she doesn't want to talk about all that happened she must know we're gonna have to."
"She does, but she wants to do it on her own time."
Vince nodded. He understood but he wanted to do it on his own time too. He headed off to try and find Torrie.
Letty slapped Leon off the back of his head.
"Don't interfere in shit you don't understand fool." She wasn't really mad, just wanted to teach Leon his lesson now.
"She needs to own up to it Let, and you letting her take off isn't helping her in the long run." Leon answered wisely and went on with his work.
Letty looked at Leon in shock, because he was ultimately right. But she didn't have to like it one bit. She pulled a nasty face at Leon.
"Yeah, well, it's none of your business neither and you didn't have to tell Vince she was here. Did you not here me say she wasn't here? You made me look like a liar too fool! Plus Torrie'll talk to everyone, when she feels like it. Would you have wanted to deal with shit like this when you felt like you were going to die?"
Leon gave Letty a look like he hadn't thought of things along the lines of how it would make Letty look for Vince to know she'd lied to him and how Torrie would feel to talk to anyone about how badly she'd behaved over the 24 hours previous.
"I guess I coulda just let things work out on there own." Leon admitted, still working on the car he was fixing.
Letty nodded yes, that this would have been a good idea and went back to her work as well. The mess of their team was just going to have to work itself out however it would, but that didn't mean that Letty couldn't try to play things into Torrie's favour.
*~*
Torrie tore off down the road the garage was on and after a few seconds of driving straight she took a hard left, breaking the rear tires of Letty's Nissan loose and skidding wildly around the corner. She was very glad that Letty's car was so similar to her own. She knew she had to get some corners and distance between her and Vince or he was going to find her. Letty's car wasn't exactly inconspicuous. Torrie knew if she just drove away from the garage Vince would find out she was gone and would come after her. Thus her wild flight around corners at double the sane amount of speed to take them at.
She took another right and then stopped for a red light. It killed her to stop at all, she wanted to run the red but she didn't dare. So instead she just sat there gunning the idling engine, waiting for her chance to squeal off the line.
She didn't know where to go. Vince knew where her father lived so if she ran to Harry's house Vince would find her easily. She could go to her uncle's but Dave wasn't likely to have any advice for her. Well, he might but then she'd have to admit how badly she'd behaved to him and while she was willing to own up to it to her team she wasn't going to go around telling her whole family.
She really wanted to talk to her dad about it but she knew going to his house was asking to be caught. The light went green and she burned out the tires taking off, smoke billowing up from the rear of the car.
First gear, still panicked with no idea what to do.
Second gear, still trying to figure out what to do.
Third gear, thinking of running away to Mexico.
Fourth gear, speed causing adrenaline to flow.
Before she could hit fifth in the city limits she had a brilliant idea. She could easily go to 'The Racer's Edge', stash Letty's car in the back and then hide in her office. Or rather her dad's office. She doubted he'd mind, plus he might even be there. She knew that he might be disappointed in her for how she'd acted but ultimately he'd take her side and protect her from Vince for as long as she wanted him too.
She turned the car toward her store and her head felt marginally better with that worry off her mind. She found herself singing along to Letty's CD. Things were going to be ok. But she was going to have to do some serious explaining. And this time she might even have to break down and apologize.
She didn't do it very often. But when she did you could bet on it being sincere. If she didn't think she should or had done anything to apologize for then she wouldn't. She'd just pull an arrogant face and walk away from the whole situation. But if she did that this time the whole house with the exception of Letty would hate her. And even Letty might get mad at her if she acted like a totally spoiled brat.
She pulled into the rear of the store and ran up to the back door. Using her code she walked in and pushed the button that would open the nearest bay door. She got back into Letty's car, drove it in and cut the motor then closed the door. She then walked up to the window overlooking the customer area, checking for Toretto's. She was glad she had because there was Vince.
He was talking to her father. Figuring she had a few minutes till he left, Torrie snuck carefully to her office and called up the garage.
"DT." Leon answered.
"May I speak to Letty please?" Torrie tried to disguise her voice so that Leon wouldn't know it was her.
"Yeah, just a second. Letty! Phone!" Leon called.
Letty came to the phone.
"'Lo?" Letty asked.
"Hey Let."
"Hey girl, you got away I guess?"
"Yeah, I'm at the store. Catch is so is Vince. But I'm hiding in the back and your car's in the back bay. So he can't see it but it could be a while before I can bring it back to you."
"Don't worry 'bout it. You going home to the house tonight? Or are you gonna stay with your dad for awhile?"
"I didn't think that far ahead yet but I'm thinking I'll go home as soon as I talk to my dad and calm down a bit. I think I need to formulate a plan of attack on the whole situation first."
"What'dya mean by that?" Letty asked, curious about what Torrie was up to.
"Well, I'm gonna have to say something at least about how I over reacted to what Chris said. I don't know if it should involve saying sorry or not but it's gonna have to involve saying I was wrong to say what I did. Then I'll have to have some sort of private talk with Vince about the whole evening of 'sin' we had. Then I have to talk to Dom on the phone. It's going to be one hell of an unpleasant night."
"Sounds like hell in California." Letty replied.
"Thanks for the encouragement." Torrie sighed.
"You already knew it was gonna suck girl. And you likely didn't help anything by running away. Vince knows you took off so you could avoid him and he isn't happy. And then I told him I hadn't seen you and Leon had to go and tell him that we spend time talking so he even knows I lied to cover for you."
"That's just super." Torrie replied sarcastically.
"So he's pissed off at both of us." Letty answered, then paused before continuing. "You know you and I could both go stay with Rome. He's got room..." Letty trailed off.
"Yeah, that'd go over real good with Dominic." Torrie snapped. "Man I'm sorry Let. It's just that this mess expands more every fricken second."
"I know. I know. I'll come home and face my music too. We should arrive together. Let's face it, we aren't gonna get to eat supper at home tonight. Wanna meet at Cora's for supper, create the battle plan, than go home at the same time?"
"Letty, you have the best ideas. Meet you at Cora's at 6?"
"Perfect. See you there." Torrie hung up the phone and as she did the door to the office opened. Her father's frame filled the doorway.
Harry jumped when he saw Torrie sitting in his chair. He'd had no idea she was around.
"Princess, when did you get here? I just had your friend here looking for you and I told him you weren't around because I didn't know you were."
"That's ok Dad. I didn't want him to know I was. I'm sort of hiding from them right now."
"Why's that Princess?" Harry asked, worried look appearing on his face.
"I did something really stupid yesterday." And with that Torrie started to cry. She tried not to but she couldn't help it. She didn't want her dad to think she was just trying to get his pity but she was so confused about how to feel about everything and how to go on from the point she found herself at that she just started to cry.
Harry walked up to her and held his arms open. Torrie stood up and allowed her father to hold her tight.
"It can't be as bad as all this Tor. What happened?"
"Well, I found something in New York that made me think Dom was cheating on me." Torrie started at the beginning so her dad would know where she'd been coming from.
"That bastard." Harry looked livid.
"Well, I said I thought he was. It turns out he wasn't. He just had some girl get all over him and before he could do anything about it she'd already gotten some of her makeup on his shirt. I found the shirt. But he didn't really do anything with her."
"You believe that?" Harry bit out, clearly he didn't believe that at all. "I mean you think he didn't tell Letty stories like that when he cheated on her?"
"I know he did daddy, but the thing is he also always told Vince the truth and since Vince confirmed Dom's story I really believe him. But I didn't wait for him to explain in New York, I just ran away and came home."
"Understandable." Harry said and sat down, inviting her to sit on his lap, an offer she accepted.
"That might have been but what I did next wasn't really." Torrie looked chagrined.
Harry waited for her to continue.
"I was sitting at the airport being miserable. I was going to call you for a ride when Vince showed up to get me. We drove home. He tried to convince me that Dom didn't do anything and he sort of succeeded. He was so good to me on the drive home. But then Vince always is good to me. But even still I decided to go out and party to forget that night anyway." Torrie figured she as going to have to tell her father the PG toned down version of the story. "I called up Lex, she said she'd go out with me so I got ready and went to go. I just wanted to go have a good time. But Vince caught me on the way out of the house and decided that I shouldn't be out on my own. He told me he was coming with me. I didn't want him to at all. I told him he was too scruffy to come out with me dressed the way he was and he went to change."
"Well, I agree with him. If you were still feeling upset then you had no business driving anywhere. Especially not the way you drive."
"Well. That would have been the plan, for him to take me where I wanted to go. But while he was gone to pretend he wasn't a grease monkey and clean up his clothes his girlfriend Chris came into the living room where I was waiting and started giving me dirty looks. She always does that stuff and normally I just brush it off. But I was having a seriously bad night. I didn't want Vince to come with me, I didn't know what to believe about Dom. I was just in a totally bad mood and the fact that Vince was treating me like a child who couldn't make a decision about what she wanted to do instead of a 22 year old girl who could really do whatever she wanted was pissing me off. So I snapped."
"What does the girl do again? And what do you mean snapped?"
"Well, she just doesn't speak to me and every time she looks at me it's just mean. We don't know each other but she decided not to like me the minute we met. I think it has something to do with the fact that she likes Vince and Vince likes me more then she thinks is appropriate. Or that's what I've been telling myself. I think there's more to it then that but I didn't want to think about it. She just didn't like me because I'm me I think."
"Because you're you?"
"Yeah, like she took one look at me and decided I was a bitch just by how I looked. And I don't get it. I was wearing Dom's shirt and a dirty old pair of my garage shorts. My hair was all over the place and I was in my bare feet. I wasn't looking stuck up, I acted nice to her. I felt sorry for her when she first came to live with us, she'd just left some abusive relationship with Vince's help and she looked all pathetic and stuff. But she was mean to me right from the first time we saw each other."
"Well, some people are just destined not to get along Tor. There's not a hell of a lot you can do about it."
"I guess but I didn't take it lying down Daddy. I kind of told a story about how V came to be called Coyote because I wanted to hurt her. It wasn't very well done of me but I honestly didn't feel sorry about it because she really hurt me too. So I didn't say anything to her. I wouldn't tell Vince I was sorry either because I wasn't. But Vince and I made up. We were bound to. But me and Chris never did and we spent the rest of the time just giving each other nasty looks."
"Well, that's maybe not the nicest thing I've ever heard Princess but I mean it's not like anyone would expect you to be all nice to the girl if she shoots you nasty looks and makes it clear she doesn't like you all the time. If all you did was give her nasty looks I don't understand what the big deal is."
"Well that was all before I went to visit Dom. When I came back and I was all confused about what was going on and how I felt and I was waiting for Vince to force his company upon me she came into the room and started giving me these dirty looks again. But in the state I was in I didn't just give her one back and let it go. I asked her what the hell she was looking at."
"Again not the nicest thing I've ever heard but not horrible either."
"Ok, but then she answered me. Her answer was 'not much'."
"Well, that's rude." Harry said and stroked Torrie's hair back out of her face as she sat curled up in his lap. "Maybe she's just jealous of more then your relationship with Vince. Maybe she's jealous of how pretty you are?"
Even if she was 22 he was very happy to have his little girl back. He'd missed being her hero while he'd been gone and then when he'd come back and found her living with Toretto one of his biggest worries had been that the younger, stronger man had taken over in her life as her hero.
"Yeah it was rude. And she's not ugly. It's not like she's hard looking or anything. She's pretty enough. Especially since she's been living with us and got some clothes that fit her and stuff. But I proved once again that the tongue of an Italian woman is sharper then most."
"How so? And why is it Italian that makes your tongue sharp? How do you know it isn't the colleen in you?"
Torrie actually laughed at that.
"Well, mom was one of the most polite, perfect women I've ever seen so I just assumed that since I've seen your temper and my own that mine is more like yours then mom's. I can't imagine mom blowing up the way I did last night."
"That's true. You got that temper from me." Harry chuckled, than sobered thinking about how Torrie's mom had been far from perfect too. But Torrie remembered her with a child's memory and she'd idolized her mom in her heart. Harry knew there was no sense trying to change that perception since his wife was dead and wasn't coming back. Torrie might as well keep her good memories he figured. "So what did you say to the girl?"
"I told her if she wanted to see a girl who wasn't much she needed to go look in a mirror cause I was the one dating Dominic not her and not to mention that I could have Vince if I wanted him as well."
Harry looked on in mild shock. While his Princess did have a temper she was normally such an easy going girl. He really didn't believe she'd said what she was telling him she had. But that just told him how upset she'd been by the whole situation with Dominic. He hugged her close for a second. He figured they could forgive her an outburst after she'd thought she'd caught the boy she'd wanted for most of her life cheating on her.
"And then she told me I was too skinny..."
Harry cut her off.
"You are too skinny!"
"Ok Ok. Like I don't hear that enough from Dom. It's the stress I've been under lately."
"Ok. Sorry to interrupt." Harry knew Torrie had issues with herself when she got stressed. She tended to worry about whatever was bothering her to the point of forgetting to eat and even missing appointments if she was really upset. Harry let his daughter continue her story.
Torrie ticked Chris's points about her off on her fingers.
"Too skinny, too pale, dress like a whore, and then she told me I was such a bitch it was no wonder that Dom took off on me for a month. Which in the state I was in sounded like 'it's no wonder Dom cheated on you 'cause you're such a bitch'. So I told her that she wasn't anything to anyone around the house, that when I told Letty what she said about Letty and I being skanky whores Let was likely to kill her and that Dom would get rid of her as soon as I told him what she said. Oh but before I told her all that stuff I slapped her across the mouth. Then when I was done I took off at a dead run."
"Victoria Colleen! That is not how I raised you! That's going too far. You hit another person?"
"I know Daddy. My life is such a mess. I'm so sorry for how I handled it. But everything is messed up. I don't know if Dom's mad at me. I know Vince is. Letty thinks I over reacted but that I should get to handle things my own way. I'm sure Mia hates me and I'll never get along with Chris now for as long as she's around."
Torrie started to sob in honest again. She didn't know what to do or where to turn now that it seemed even her dad was mad at her.
"I want mom! Mom would know what to do."
"Oh princess. Mom likely would know what to do. But mom's gone. So I guess you'n I'll have to figure it out."
"You mean you're not mad at me?"
"No. I'm not mad. I'm sort of disappointed that you behaved so badly. You're a bit old for this kind of behaviour. But I'm not mad. Just worried about you and wondering what you're going to do to fix it. I can't believe this girl called you a whore. That's really sort of going too far on her end too. But you never should have hit her Torrie. It's never right to hit another person. Not ever. I can see where you'd feel the need to tell her off but never to hit her."
Torrie threw her arms around her father's neck.
"I love you daddy."
"I love you too princess. What do you want to do for the rest of the day?"
Harry changed the subject. He figured that Torrie would want to think about something else.
"Hide here till it's time to meet Letty for supper?" Torrie asked, almost like a question, like she was waiting for permission to stay in the office. She was worried that her dad would tell her to go home right away and face the firing squad.
"If that's what you want to do Tor."
"Well, Letty and I are going to make the game plan over dinner then I'm going home. I know I was wrong but I still need some support here, you know? I have so much to answer for. But on the other hand so does Chris."
"Well, I guess she does, but you really went too far. Plus didn't you say the girl just got out of a really bad situation?"
"Well, yeah."
"Then shouldn't you give her a bit of a break."
"Maybe but then again it's been a hard year for me too."
"Yeah it has. But that should sort of make you empathize with this girl and maybe go easy on her, not use what you've been through as an excuse to act just as poorly as this Chris girl."
"Thanks Daddy. You always knew just what I needed to hear."
"You're welcome Princess. If you're going to hang around here for the rest of the afternoon make yourself useful and enter that list of stock into the computer for me would you?"
"Of course Daddy."
Torrie started to work with the computer as her father left the office. Things seemed a lot more clear to her after their chat. Her father had a point, she had been using her hard year as an excuse to try and get away with stuff she knew was wrong and she figured, on the other hand, so was Chris. It was clear the whole team had to have a talk.