Then
If I’d known what waited for me inside the apartment, I’d have never walked through the front door.
I glided through it ten minutes before curfew with a dizzy smile on my face, and the kind of bliss that only comes from a first kiss—a moment I’d waited on for months. Finally, I was getting somewhere with Davis Armstrong, III. Finally, we’d made the move from friendship to more.
And finally, my love life had started to resemble the pile of romance novels I kept stashed in a cardboard box on the second shelf of my closet. Whatever happened next was going to be amazing. I felt it in every muscle of my body.
“Hey Mom,” I said as I entered the apartment. I shut the door behind me then kept moving toward the front room that dominated our place. I still clutched the iPod Davis had given me that night, one that came loaded with the Rent soundtrack, something we both loved. “Tonight, was the best. The absolute best. I can’t tell you. I was with Davis, and you’re not going to believe this but…”
Two men I didn’t recognize flanked my mother.
One sat next to her on the couch, the other perched on the overstuffed chair we’d salvaged from a yard sale the previous year. They looked stricken and stone-faced. “Wait. Who are—?”
“Samantha, I’m glad you’re home.” Mom wiped her red nose with a wrinkled tissue. Her voice sounded hollow and lifeless. “Please, pull up a chair. These men want to talk to us.”
“Okay.” I dropped my purse near the alcove and followed her request. I dragged the wooden chair from around the kitchen table into the living room and took a seat. No one spoke for a long moment. My gaze settled on my mom. “So, what’s going on?”
“Well, these are”—Mom gave the man in the darker suit a helpless look as she threw up a hand—“I don’t really know how to introduce you all.”
“That’s fine. We will take it from here,” the man replied. He had a booming, baritone voice and a dark, scruffy beard. He fixed his attention on me. “I’m Gregory McCord, attorney-at-law. I represent the Armstrong family.”
“One of several who do,” the second man said, his voice only a little bit higher than Gregory’s. “I’m Robert Perez, and I also represent the family.” The two men glanced at each other. “We’re here to talk about the effect you and your mother might have on the family, and how we can, perhaps, smooth things over.”
My stomach dropped, and I knew instantly what this was about. Things had been odd since a few days earlier, when my mom had come home late from work. She’d been crying; her mascara had run down her face in large streaks, and I spotted what looked like a large welt across the side of her face. But when I’d asked her what happened, she’d only told me that Davis Armstrong, Jr. had been drinking again, and he hadn’t known what he was doing.
She’d also begged me not to tell his son anything. So, I hadn’t.
“Is this about the other night?” I whispered. I looked at my mother for confirmation. She stared at the ragged blue carpet.
“Whatever the two of you think you might know happened that night, I assure you, Mr. Armstrong is terribly sorry for his actions,” said Mr. McCord. “And the family appreciates your discretion so far.”
So far? What?
“Thanks,” my mother choked.
Something heavy hung in the air.
“Ms. Green, he’s willing to offer you a formal written apology if this conversation goes as well as he expects. That’s in addition of the previous offer, the one we were just discussing.”
“In fact, when we looked over the terms, we believe it’s very generous,” added Mr. Perez.
“Terms?” I asked. “What do you mean?” I’d never heard people speak like this, as if they had an agenda they wanted to lord over my mom and me. I searched their faces for clues about where this all might be headed.
I didn’t get much.
“Terms, meaning conditions. We’ll get to that in a moment.” Gregory McCord still spoke in a flat, clinical tone, and I wondered if he had said these kinds of words many times. “As I said, Ms. Green, Mr. Armstrong can be careless, and he makes mistakes.”
Mom scoffed. “I’d hardly call what he did that night a mistake. He knew full well what he was doing. He’d done it with others—”
Mr. McCord waved away her statement. “Whatever it was, he knows the incident has given you and your daughter some…ahem…leverage against him. He’d like to release the pressure.”
My mom’s face went blank, expressionless. In fact, she’d mostly been that way since that night. My mother, the strongest woman I knew, had cried for hours on the kitchen floor when she came home. I shifted in the chair as I remembered how powerless I’d felt. Over and over, she’d mumbled how she needed to keep her job no matter what, but she’d done nothing wrong. The look of abject despair and her cries were unlike anything I’d ever seen.
She blamed herself.
“I’ve worked for the Armstrongs for almost fifteen years.” My mom cleared her throat. “I’m a loyal employee. For the last five, I’ve overseen their household cleaning staff. I’ve never done anything to make them think I’m not devoted to my job. And I’ve certainly never collected any leverage against Junior or anyone else.”
Mr. Perez picked up a file off the coffee table, one I hadn’t noticed before. He took a pair of glasses from his pocket, put them on his large nose, opened the folio, and studied the contents. “Yes, I see here you’ve had nothing but glowing reviews and recommendations from the other staff members.” He looked up from the paperwork. “That’s certainly something we can take into account.”
Mr. McCord reached for the folder then examined the pages. “Let’s get to the point. Ms. Green, the Armstrongs are prepared to offer a one-time payout of one hundred thousand dollars, along with two years of supplemental payments of twenty-five thousand, for a total of one hundred fifty thousand dollars.” He paused. “Quite a generous offer, don’t you agree?”
My throat went dry. One hundred fifty thousand dollars. One hundred fifty. Why would they offer her so much money?
Whatever Junior did, it must be awful…
Regardless, I couldn’t fathom a sum like that, much less a lifestyle where that kind of cash could be accessed on demand. It was a lot of money. More than my mother made in many years of housekeeping.
She’d never told me her salary, but I knew it wasn’t much. We couldn’t afford a lot of things that my classmates had, and she’d already told me that if I wanted to go after my dream of going to Florida State for college, I needed to get school loans. We were barely middle class, and it never felt like we had solid footing. The small apartment we lived in gave us a daily reminder of that.
“What do I have to do in return?” my mother asked.
“It’s very simple,” Mr. McCord replied. “You and your daughter must sign a legally binding agreement that states you will not pursue a criminal case against Davis Armstrong II. The contract also says that you will not sell this story to any media outlet or publication.”
“Criminal case?” As the question escaped my mouth, my mother glared at me.
“After you sign, the events that happened that evening will be considered resolved.”
I gaped at him. “Resolved?”
I looked at my mom again, and shock pulsed through me. I knew what Davis did to her that night was bad, but this? This was on a different level, and I struggled to understand it. “What does he mean?”
“It’s all very complicated, honey.” Her shoulders sank, and her eyes widened. Suddenly, she looked much older than forty-two. “I’d wanted to shield you from this. I didn’t want you involved.”
“Unfortunately, she must be,” Mr. Perez said.
“She’s only sixteen.”
“We know she’s aware of what happened.”
“I need a cigarette,” Mom muttered.
“No, you can’t smoke,” I insisted. “You quit.”
“You’ve got a live one here, don’t you?” Mr. McCord gave me a cold glance then refocused on my mother. “She’s old enough to cause problems.”
“She won’t.”
“Regardless, your daughter has to be part of this too.” He cleared his throat. “And finally, you must also accept the termination of your employment with the Armstrong family. From here forward, you and your daughter must end all contact with everyone in the Armstrong family. This includes Mr. Armstrong Senior, his son, Mr. Armstrong Junior, and his grandson, Davis Armstrong III.”
“No!” I almost shouted my protest. “I won’t do that.” I leapt from the chair, and it toppled to the carpet. “Absolutely not. No way. I won’t.”
Mom stood too. “Samantha, come with me, please.” She turned to the two lawyers. “If you don’t mind, we need a minute.” She crossed the room and grabbed my elbow. “Let’s chat in your room.”
“Mom, this is—”
“Now,” she said in her sharpest voice.
Without another word, I followed her down the short hallway and into my bedroom, the place I’d called my own domain for the last six years. She shut the door then sat us on the frilly white duvet that covered my bed.
“You’re not seriously entertaining this idea, are you?” I asked.
She glanced in the direction of the hallway. “Samantha, they are making us a very generous offer.”
I scoffed.
“This is more money than I will make in three years of housecleaning. Five years, even.”
“So, what? This is blackmail.”
“I know.” She moved closer to me on the bed and gripped both of my arms. “But Sam, you don’t know how much I’ve been trying to spare you from what happened. It was awful.” She glanced away for a beat, and when her attention returned, I saw a deep sadness that seemed to go all the way to her soul. “I didn’t—”
“Tell me what exactly happened. All of it. Tell me.”
She gulped. “No. No, honey. You don’t need all the details. Besides, this offer isn’t something to dismiss. Think of all the things we can do with that money.”
“It sounds shady.”
She nodded. “But I don’t want to face Junior again. I just—I want this to go away. As fast as possible.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re going to sign it, aren’t you?” The words came out as a whisper, and a sinking feeling filled my stomach. “You’re going to actually do this.”
“Yes.”
I put my hand in hers. For the last few days, I’d been able to separate my growing feelings for Trey away from my mom’s pain. But as we sat together on the bed, I began to realize just how wrong this all was. Whatever he’d done—Trey’s father had turned into an awful man, and now he wanted to buy my mom’s silence.
“Don’t do this, Mom. Don’t let them pay us off and make it disappear. You should tell the police what happened. What he did to you was wrong. Criminal.”
She didn’t have to tell me the specifics for me to know that. To feel it.
“Even if the police did take the case, it isn’t worth what they would make us go through.” A deep sigh escaped her lips. “The Armstrongs have many lawyers at their disposal. Those guys out there are just two of them.”
“But—”
“No, Samantha. Stop. I’ve thought about this a thousand times, and I don’t have a choice.” She shrugged. “This is the best option that we have.”
“But have you really thought about what they are asking? It’s not just you.” I pulled myself from her grip and put my head in my hands. The reality of the demands began to wash over me. “I just…I…I can’t cut off my relationship with Trey. Not when things have just changed. Not when—”
She wrapped an arm around me. “I know. It won’t be easy. But you can. You will. Besides, you and Trey—you’re from two different worlds. You had to know that, honey.” She pulled me in to halfway hug. “The two of you were never going to understand each other, no matter how much you might think that you have in common.”
I gaped at her.
“This is a way out, Sam, and we need to take it. It keeps us safe. And it gives us some financial freedom.”
Her tone told me she’d already woven tales of our possibilities for our future. A better life, one paved with each dollar from this settlement. But, I didn’t want to leave…
“This affects my life too. I hate that you were hurt, Mom. But I need to know. If I’m going to sign a document that forbids me contacting the boy I really like, I want to know what his father did. I’m sixteen. I might be a teenager, but I’m not a baby. And I’m your daughter, Mom.”
She sucked in a deep breath. Neither of us spoke for a long moment.
“Davis was drunk,” she finally said. “I know that. He’s—he’s been drinking a lot lately, and when he came into the house that night, he was worse off than usual. He got upset with me about something I’d done wrong when it came to polishing some of the art on display in the library. He…he attacked me. That’s the best way to put it.” She lowered her voice. “But I fought back. He didn’t get what he wanted.”
I gulped. Maybe I didn’t want her to tell me all the horrible details. I could guess most of them. I’d seen plenty of news reports about what powerful men often did to vulnerable women.
“And now he wants to pay you off,” I managed. “To pay us off.”
Her eyes searched my face. “There are worse outcomes, honey.”
Worse than my mother getting attacked at her job? Worse than being paid to keep silent?
I stared at my mother for what felt like a long time. She wanted to sign this, and she’d do it. I knew it. She wanted to put what had happened behind her and start anew. And she wanted to end our strange history with one of the most powerful families in Palm Beach.
“Okay,” I finally said, even though my heart pounded in my chest as if the next words I’d speak felt like they would crush my soul. “If you want to do this, then do it.”
She gave me a weak smile. “It’s going to be okay, Samantha. I promise. You’ll see.”