Forbidden Son by Loretta C. Rogers

“You don’t scare me. After
Tripp and I are married and settled in Massachusetts, I’ll get a job and send
money to my parents. I’m sure Tripp will help out, too.”
    The
Judge roared with raucous laughter, and then a mean sneer draped over his face.
“Obviously, you don’t know my son very well. When it comes down to who controls
the purse strings, coupled with my son’s drive to become a high-ranking
politician, I can assure you, Miss Garrett, money and power will win out over
lust and surviving on baloney sandwiches.”
    When
she opened her mouth to protest, he lifted a large brown envelope from the seat
and shoved it toward her. “If you need more convincing, imagine my son’s
reaction when he sees these photographs. You’ve misled him, haven’t you, Miss
Garrett?”
    “No.
I never have.”
    “Take
a very good look at them. Perhaps you’ll change your response.”
    Not
knowing what to expect, her hands trembled as she removed the pictures from the
envelope and, one by one, looked at black-and-white images of her backyard,
strewn with a sundry of car parts, an old washing machine, a broken toilet,
stacks of rotting lumber from a project her father had never gotten around to
building, and rusting barrels overflowing with black plastic garbage bags.
    There
were pictures of her mother wearing a slip while she hung clothes on the
clothesline, another of her father and his cronies seated on cinder blocks
drinking beer, and shots of various angles of the house with its peeling paint,
broken steps, and windows whose cracks were repaired with gray duct tape. The
worst picture of all was of her sitting in a man’s lap. She held a beer can in
one hand and with the other was making an obscene gesture at someone out of
camera view. As bad as it was, the last and most incriminating were the scenes
of her standing under the elm tree in front of the two-storied house where she
always met Tripp, of her walking toward the front door of her pretend home, and
then others of her walking away from the house as soon as Tripp had pulled away
from the curb.
    She
turned one particular picture toward Tripp’s father. “This is my cousin. Bubba
and I were just having fun.”
    “Photographs
speak louder than words, young woman. They prove an important fact about you.
Are you interested in knowing?”
    Sitting
up a little straighter, and feeling as if she already knew the answer, there
was a perverse need to hear someone other than herself speak the words. “By all
means, Judge Hartwell, enlighten me.”
    A
scornful smile stiffened his face. “Simply put, Miss Garrett, it proves you are
a liar.”
    It
was true. All of it. She was a liar. She had deceived Tripp about everything
except the fact that she truly loved him.
    In
a rush of anger, she ripped the pictures into shreds and threw the pieces at
the impeccably dressed man seated across from her. “You are a mean, despicable
man, Judge Hartwell. I hate you.” She didn’t try to control the shriek in her
voice.
    “Hate
me all you please, Miss Garrett. The fact remains that my son’s future is at
stake. Whatever it takes, I will go to any measure to see he reaches his
fullest potential.”
    Tripp’s
father slipped a smaller envelope of pictures from a briefcase, and held them
for her to see.
    “This
is blackmail.” Consumed with humiliation, she reached to snatch the photographs
from his hand.
    He
laughed and held them out of reach. “Call it what you will, young woman. As a
judge, I’d say it’s evidence against a conniving little gold-digger.”
    She
wanted to slap the smirk off his face when he held up the image of her mother
dressed in a slip thin enough for the sun to outline her nude body, and then
the one of herself straddling her cousin’s lap, and another of her father in
the backyard, asleep on an old divan, a beer can dangling from his hand.
    “You’ve
probably heard the old saying, ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s
ear.’ Do you know what