She knows Ashley performed at the strip club

"Oh hey!" You give a big fake yawn and try to deflect the unwanted trajectory of this conversation, "Listen, could this wait until tomorrow. I'm beat."

"Sit." She says nodding at the sofa. Her face is calm, but her stern tone suggests a great deal of anger boiling under the surface. You sit and decide not to test your luck. "Do you know where your daughter was tonight?"

Shit. Is this a rhetorical question because she knows you know where Ashley was tonight or is it a legitimate question because she doesn't know if you know where Ashley was tonight? You take your odds with the latter. "No, I noticed the car isn't in the driveway, is she home yet?" You look at your watch.

"She's upstairs. ****. Her car is at a strip club."

You put on your best-shocked face. "Why is her car at a strip club? Wait, was she..."

"Yes. Your daughter spent her night at a strip club. I woke up to a thumping in the hallway to find a strange woman, in our house, carrying our drunken daughter up the stairs. After a great deal of terrified screaming on my part the woman, A STRIPPER, explained the situation to me. I know you didn't care if your daughter left the house looking like a stripper, but do you maybe care, at all, what your daughter was doing at a strip club?"

The anger isn't bubbling under the surface anymore. She stands up and her voice is slowly starting to rise as she speaks. You tell her to go on.

"STRIPPING! SHE ENTERED AN AMATEUR NIGHT COMPETITION! YOUR! DAUGHTER! WAS! STRIPPING!"

You reach your hand out to touch Melissa's hand. "Calm down, I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for all of this. Are you sure the woman was telling the truth?"

Melissa looks down at you with not just daggers in her eyes, but long swords. "That...stripper...bless her heart...is probably the only reason your daughter made it home and didn't end up **** in a ditch. She told me Ashley entered an amateur night competition."

You think about all of the shots Destiny had been pouring into Ashley. And then you briefly picture Destiny grinding into Ashley's face and smile. The smile doesn't get past Melissa. "What's funny, John? Your daughter has jumped head first into being a whore, so I don't know why you're smiling."

The smile falls off your face and you consider the situation. You're paralyzed. Melissa finding out what Ashley was up to was your nightmare. It's hard not to defend Ashley considering you put her in this situation and, unless you sacrifice yourself to your blackmailer, she'll probably be in more situations like this. "I-I'm not sure what to do, Melissa. She's an adult."

Wrong answer. Melissa paces back and forth in front of you. Her silence is disturbing. You brace yourself for screaming, but instead, she sits down again. She stares long and hard directly into your eyes. Never in your life have you been scared of her, but at this moment you're absolutely terrorized. "I tried. I tried to protect her from herself this morning, but you let her go. I have now asked you to help me rescue her from this ledge she's balancing on and your answer is she's an adult, so we shouldn't do anything? She's doesn't even graduate high school for two more months!"

"Well, not exactly, I mean, we should definitely talk to her, but we should be careful. What if she runs away? At least now she's going through this under our roof."

Melissa points at you. Her finger seems longer than usual, like it's a drill heading straight for your soul, "You're such a coward. You've always let that girl run all over you and have never taken a hard line with her always saying 'Yes' whenever she wants something. You've spoiled her and look where that's gotten us."

She leans back and looks at the ceiling. You look down at your feet feeling a hollowness in the pit of your stomach, which is weird because you also feel like you want to throw up. Still looking at the ceiling Melissa says, "I'm going to give you three options, so you can decide the future of this family:

"1) You leave. Go rent an apartment for a month and think about your decisions concerning your daughter. I'll do my best to reign her in on my own.

"2) I leave. You think you're such a great parent, fine. I'll stay with my mother for a month and leave you with **** but to make the hard decisions regarding your daughter. If you've smartened up and have turned her around I'll come back.

"3) She leaves. You want to treat her like an adult, fine with me. Let her live like an adult. We'll rent her an apartment downtown, but she can figure out how to pay for her own food.

"4) You act like a husband and father. Tomorrow you ground her, we throw out all of those inappropriate clothes, and we go buy her an appropriate wardrobe."

"Hun, most of those options seem irrational to me. Let's just have a talk with her in the morning."
She stands up and walks to the hall closet. She starts pulling out blankets and pillows. "Those are the options. If MOST of those options are irrational to you then maybe you should choose the rational one, because the fact that you won't stand up to your daughter is completely irrational to me." She throws the blankets and pillows on the couch. "I'm going to bed. These are for the couch."

Without another word she storms up the stairs. You wait for the door to slam, but she closes it gently. Maybe confronting Ashley is the best thing to do. What's the worst thing that your blackmailer can do now? Melissa seeing the pictures of Ashley being naughty on the beach and in her bedroom pale in comparison to stripping. Sure, the blackmailer did threaten to send the beach photos to Cindy's parents, too, but that's not really your problem. Not if you want to save your family.

As you climb under the sheets on the couch and pull them tight your phone alerts you to a new message. The blackmailer: "That escalated quickly."

You type: "I've thought it over and I need to take Ashley out of the game. I didn't think it would end up like this."

Blackmailer: "That's not an option."

You: "It is. Go ahead and send the photos of Ashley. It can't do any more harm than stripping has."
Blackmailer: "Are you arguing with me?"

You: "I guess I am."

Blackmailer: "I have an additional photo I want you to see."

A file arrives on your phone. You open it after it loads swallow hard. The photo is aiming down on you from above. You're sitting at Ashley's computer in her room. On the screen is the picture of Ashley with a cucumber inside her. Your hand is in your pants.

Blackmailer: "Here's the deal. If you take Ashley out of the game tomorrow the game is over. You lose. I send the evidence of your affair to your wife. I send the evidence of your corporate espionage to your company. I send Ashley's photos to your wife and Cindy's parents. I include the photo of you clearly (and excitedly) knowing about her photos, so it's clear to her you were responsible for her ****. I'll also consider sending to the authorities a copy of the email you used to send the photos to my anonymous account. If you check you'll see those photos are time stamped 15 days before Ashley's 18th birthday."

The way you feel right now makes you think of the scene in Trainspotting where Renton overdoses and sinks into the floor. You're stuck. Ashley's stuck, because of you.

You: "You win."

Blackmailer: "You'll be lenient on your daughter even if it pisses off your wife?"

You: "Yes."

Blackmailer: "Good. I'll send you a new task after you make your decision as to what to do about Ashley. Good night, pervert."

You delete the text message thread and put the phone under your pillow. You close your eyes, but you don't sleep. Instead, you spend the rest of the night trying to decide what to tell Melissa.

Evidence Remaining

6 Documents
5 Photos