Mom: Get what I need.
I scroll over an image that makes my blood freeze.
What the hell is going on?
It’s a picture of Claire. If Claire was a centerfold. Or maybe it’s a still-shot of some porn she was in, some sort of sex tape she made with someone. It’s explicit.
Confused, I continue scrolling. Dozens more of the same types of images slip under my thumb.
I drop my chin to my chest; I can’t stop myself from staring at them. It makes me nauseous. And yet…
The phone feels heavier in my hand.
Suddenly I’m struggling against my arousal. My heart races and hammers against its cage in my chest. My face heats and tingles with utter self-loathing, shame, and absolute disgust. It’s unnerving.
Unsettling, dark thoughts fester and multiply in my head. It takes me a few moments to get my dick and brain in the same place. I’m no longer a fifteen-year-old kid bewitched by a beautiful girl, I’m a grown man with a laundry list of lovers after Claire. Her family’s transgressions caused so much anger and pain in mine. It doesn’t matter how erotic the pictures are, or how intense the memories of being with Claire are, she’s off limits. She’s no good, just like her mother.
I need to focus on the facts, not how good she looks naked. I could text any woman I know right now and ask them to send me pictures and they would without shame. I don’t need to gawk at Claire’s.
Focus.
Why would her mother be sending Claire her own nude pictures?
Claire: Please don’t do anything. I’m not here alone. I need time.
Mom: JUST FIND IT OR THESE PICTURES GET LEAKED!
Blackmail? Libby Radcliffe is blackmailing her own daughter? The next few moments I’m questioning everything I thought about Claire Radcliffe. Why would Libby Radcliffe do that to her own daughter? Unless Claire was telling the truth and Libby was dead, and these texts were from someone else entirely.
Fuck me, it’s always something sordid and crazy with these Radcliffe women.
I try to clear my thoughts and look at the facts. First, it seems like someone thinks my father had hidden offshore accounts. Second, someone is forcing Claire to find them. Third, Libby Radcliffe may have committed suicide. Fourth, Libby Radcliffe may still be breathing and Claire is a liar.
I’m giving myself whiplash.
My head spins trying to figure out what to do; what to think. Maybe there’s more information I can get off the phone? I have to find out what I can, and quick, before Claire comes knocking back on the door looking for it. I swipe through more of the texts. Before two days ago, there was no correspondence between Libby and Claire save for one message from a year prior. Claire texted her mother about getting a job at a private school, but Libby never answered. But that could mean nothing, she could have deleted all the messages for all I knew.
Or maybe Libby just hadn’t cared enough to respond. Maybe Libby Radcliffe was like my father in those regards, cold and heartless toward her own offspring.
The menacing messages and images start on Wednesday, and whomever this is, threatens to send all the pictures to her school, to each of her students, and all their parents.
Jesus, that’s messed up. That can’t end well for someone teaching in a private school, can it?
I click out of their conversation and open another. There’re only three different message threads. The one with Libby, another with a contact named Paul, and an ongoing conversation with a friend named Madeline.
The Paul contact texted he was sorry for her loss and that if she needed anything, all she had to do was call him. He mentions her lesson plans are taken care of for the rest of the week. So, maybe that means her mother is really dead.
The conversations between Claire and Madeline are a bit different. From scanning over them quickly they look like everyday chats between two friends. Plans to see movies, a long, drawn-out discussion about a book they were reading together, and sprinkled throughout were bits of Madeline venting about numerous dates that were a waste of her time. The last few messages contain Madeline asking if Claire wants her to help collect her mother’s things and to call if she needs anything.
There was no mention about Claire being in a relationship, or being blackmailed by a dead mother. There was no mention of anything else at all.
Her email is full of correspondence with parents and colleagues, nothing suspicious or personal, not even spam. I click through the deleted files and the spam files and still come up empty. She doesn’t even have a single image on her camera roll.
So, what it looks like is someone is using her dead mother’s phone to blackmail her for my father’s money?
Glancing up at the front door, I wonder why she hasn’t noticed her phone is gone and come storming back in here, demanding it back.
A sharp howling wind blows just outside the house, reminding me of the storm—the blizzard I just threw Claire out in.
