Mother - Settling the Score

One year ago...

Claire Henderson walked into Simone Chandler's expansive corner office carrying her notebook and a stack of legal papers. She expected to need the notebook, but she'd just snatched the papers randomly off of her cubicle desk when Simone had summoned her. She felt a need to always look busy in Simone's presence, which was silly--first because she always

was

busy and second because although Simone could be brusque at times she'd been nothing but encouraging in the three months since Claire had taken a clerk's position at Travis & Chandler.

"Matt Ellis says you did the research and drafted the brief for Stephens versus New Derby," Simone said without taking her eyes from her computer monitor.

"Uh, yes Ma'am." Claire hesitated. "Did I miss something important?"

"All of it's important. Nonetheless...you were the one who turned up that public use ruling from...when, 1862? Quite a reach for a relevant precedent, wasn't it?"

Claire shifted uneasily on her feet. "Ma'am--"

"It got Judge Ramirez's attention. Enough so that he entered summary judgment for our client at the hearing. Guess the city will have to find a route for the light rail extension that doesn't gobble up half of Marshal Spring's back nine."

At last, Simone looked up at Claire and smiled. "A nineteenth-century judgment for a pig farmer has saved a major client the time and expense of a trial--oh, and just by-the-by, probably saved their entire business to boot. They're very, very happy. Which makes me very happy. Frankly, this win was as much yours as it was Matt's."

Claire let out her breath slowly. "Thank you, Ma'am."

"Simone. We're friends here. Burke and I have known you for ages, ever since Herb first joined the firm. When you were a new mother with twins." She gestured to the occasional chair in front of her desk. Claire sat. "You are head-and-shoulders the best law clerk we've ever hired. As well you should be, considering your background. It's time we talk about your options.

"I understand that dipping a toe back into the professional waters, after so many years at home with the children, has been a big step for you. But you can't be satisfied for too much longer with being the--forgive me--the most 'senior' law clerk in New Derby. You should be practicing law again. Full time. Here. Burke and I would love to have you on staff."

"I-I'm very flattered, Ma'am--I mean, Simone. I'm afraid that it might be complicated right now."

"You mean that your husband would object." Simone rolled her eyes ever so slightly. "Stuff and nonsense. Is this 1951, Claire? I'm well aware that Herb didn't like you putting in for the clerkship here. And believe me, I know how challenging it can be for spouses working alongside one another in a highly charged environment like ours. God knows I'm sure Burke thinks so, too. But look, I'll ask him to have a word with Herb--"

"No! That is, please don't. I--"

The receptionist beeped Simone's desk phone. "Your twelve o'clock is waiting, Ma'am."

"Send her on in." Simone turned her attention back to Claire. "So, then...?"

"Thank you so much for the offer, Simone. May I have a day or two to think it over?"

"Of course, dear." Simone shrugged and returned to her work without another word.

Claire struggled to sort her thoughts while walking back to her cubicle in the outer office. It wasn't as if she hadn't hoped for this opportunity when she'd applied for the job. She just hadn't expected it to come so quickly! But she feared that if she accepted, the months of simmering resentment that had been brewing with her husband would break out into open warfare. He'd been adamant that she not take on a full-time job, and livid that she'd applied to T&G. "It looks like I pulled strings or something."

Which was Herb Henderson in a nutshell: controlling and completely absorbed in his image, his career--basically, in himself. Well, she'd given in to his demands far too often when the children were younger. Now that Robyn commuted to college and spent most of her waking hours on campus, and Noah...

Claire pushed thoughts of Noah away. In protecting his pride, Herb had failed their son. So had she. Yielding to her husband to avoid conflict had become such an ingrained habit over the years that when she'd needed to summon her strength, for Noah's sake, she'd discovered it had flown.

Brooding alone at home in the empty days since then had become unbearable. She saw only two ends to this story: drink herself to death, or work herself to death.

Mustering the dregs of her courage, she'd chosen work.

When she reached her desk there was a thumb drive laying on the touchpad of her laptop. She assumed that it contained some research files that she'd asked an intern to find for her earlier. When she plugged it in, a password prompt appeared. There wasn't a note with the drive, nor any message from the intern.

A one-word text popped up on her phone's notification window:

!Autonomy1

Claire looked around at the neighboring workstations and back down the aisle. She was alone. Shrugging, she typed "!Autonomy1" into the prompt, which was immediately replaced by a list of files on the drive. She opened the first.

Her blood froze in her veins.

It was an image of her husband sitting naked on a bed with two young women crouched on either side of him. One was playing with his balls while the other sucked his dick.

Claire slammed the laptop shut. Fighting a surge of panic, she pulled the machine free from its docking station and sprinted with it out of the glass office enclosure, down the corridor. She found an empty meeting room. Locking herself inside to make sure she'd be left alone she flipped the display open and looked again.

Fake,

she told herself.

Photoshopped.

Who would want to hurt her husband? Probably a lot of people. There were lawyers at the firm who disliked him. Attorneys he'd faced off against in court who hated his guts. And clients who valued his expertise but would call him an asshole to his face. The sad truth was that Herb Henderson wasn't easy to like. He had enemies.

None of which really mattered because, however strongly Claire wanted to deny the evidence of her eyes, it was definitely Herb getting serviced by the two young blondes on the bed. She'd lived with him for twenty-five years, and she knew too well what he looked like naked.

But would he do this? Would he cheat on me?

She knew the answer to that, too, and she hated it.

Steeling herself, she opened several others of the files and got another shock: they weren't all just Herb fucking other women. The pictures apparently documented a full-fledged orgy in what looked like a lavish hotel suite.

One showed City Council Chair Nguyen bent forward on a white leather sofa with one knee on the cushion and her other foot planted on the floor for balance, wide open to the tall young man taking her from behind.

Another was of the CEO of Delacard Laboratories, one of Herb's major clients, lying naked on the carpet while three men stood over her with their hands on their pricks, letting their cum fly over her face and tits and cunt.

Many of the shots appeared to have been taken surreptitiously; some were just clumsy close angles of cocks and cunts. Some faces were blurry. Claire wasn't sure that was Bill Sullivan from IP Litigation getting head from a nameless brunette, but it was definitely his wife Annette watching them with a licentious smile while another man mauled her big tits from behind. Other images, however, were clearly of the participants showing off, such as one of T&G attorney Loretta Murphy vamping for the camera with her legs spread, her assistant Tessa going down on her while two guys waited to join in.

And there were more pictures of her husband. One showed Herb with his dick buried in the snatch of a slim brunette who looked about the same age as their daughter Robyn. Another had him flat on his back being ridden by a tattooed woman with huge silicone tits and pierced nipples. She looked like a porn actress. What were the odds? Her legs were spread impossibly wide and rather than having his prick in her cunt, Herb was fucking her in the ass.

Claire lingered on this image, intrigued despite her heartbreak. Anal sex was something she'd been curious about but never tried. It had not occurred to her that Herb might want it.

Why did he never suggest this?

She wondered, then,

Why didn't I?

She felt the unwelcome warmth of arousal between her legs as she stared at the picture. Angry with herself, she ignored it and moved on. The next picture was Herb on his knees with--

Someone knocked on the door. Claire slammed the computer closed. The room might have been reserved. She took a deep breath, smoothed her skirt, and went to open up.

"Ah, found you! We--Hey, what's wrong?" Matt Ellis stood in the doorway looking at her with concern.

"No- nothing," Claire lied. "I was just taking a break. Do you need the room?"

"Herb was looking for you. Someone said they saw you come down here."

"Oh, God. I don't want--I can't see him. I can't talk to Herb." Claire looked imploringly up into Matt's warm gray eyes, heart pounding in her chest.

"Whoa. You okay?"

Claire paused, at a loss to reply. Matt was Herb's best friend; one of very few. But he had been a friend to her as well and she felt that she could trust him.

"I want to get out of here. Go somewhere. I need to...God, I don't know, I don't know what to do."

"Easy, kid, easy. It's going to be all right." Matt put his hand on her shoulder. "Benny's? We can get coffee. Or lunch."

"Lunch." Claire snatched up her computer and followed him out. "I need a drink."

†††

Benny's was a neighborhood hangout dating back to before the Second World War. It had relocated just once, in the early 1960s, when the old blocks had been razed to make way for 111 Castle Square--now the tallest building in the financial district, and the building where Travis & Chandler was headquartered. The little sandwich shop had charm but no liquor license; it was not a place where the high-powered attorneys and brokers on the Square would lunch with clients. No one would find Claire and Matt in a back corner booth there.

The place did serve beer.

Claire needed something;

she couldn't stop her hands from shaking or keep a quiver out of her voice as she briefly told Matt what she'd discovered. The laptop remained closed on the red vinyl seat beside her. She couldn't show him. That would have mortified her, breaking what little emotional control she was still hanging onto.

Matt's eyes widened at her story. "I don't get it," he said, at last, a flicker of anger crossing his face. "Why would someone send you a thing like that?"

"No one sent it. Someone in the office left it on my desk. They texted me the password."

"Who texted you?"

"Spoofed number. I thought it might be the prison, so I looked at it and I--" Claire paused as it dawned on her Matt had shown no real surprise at her story. He'd listened with sympathy and an occasional flash of anger on her behalf as she'd haltingly described the general nature of the pictures, but he'd shown no shock at hearing that such an event had taken place or that Herb had participated.

"You already know all this." Claire guessed. She struggled to keep her tone calm and even. "Tell me, Matt. Tell me everything."

He stared at the worn Formica tabletop between them, unable to look her in the eye. "I'm sorry, Claire. I'm really, really sorry. I don't know what to tell you. You know I look up to Herb. He brought me into this firm. He's mentored me, and I owe him."

"There's got to be a limit, Matt. Even to friendship."

"Yeah." He chose his words carefully. "This is...sort of something that Herb does. For the firm."

"Excuse me?"

"He arranges these, um, these 'encounters' for the heavy hitters--major clients, politicians, media influencers that T&C can use. He just calls it 'networking.' But it's darker than that. Having stuff like what you saw on file can occasionally make some of those people easier to manage. And I guess you also saw...some of our people get into it." He raised his eyes to hers and gave a short, uncomfortable laugh. "Some company benefit, huh? It goes right to the top of the firm, Claire."

"Blackmail? Jesus Christ." Here she'd thought nothing could shock her more today than what she'd already seen. "Does Burke Chandler know?"

Matt's only response was a furtive nod.

"Have...did you ever...'get into it' yourself?"

His face clouded over. He didn't answer.

Claire suppressed an impulse to throw her glass at him and bolt for the door. But she couldn't summon the rage against him that she felt for her husband. Matt was ashamed of what he'd done, because Matt was a decent guy. He seemed nearly as crushed by the weight of keeping these secrets for her husband and their employers as she was to have stumbled onto them.

She liked Matt, damn it, no matter what. She liked him so much that at times she'd guiltily catch herself comparing him with her husband. Matt was empathetic, quiet, and good-humored, often to his own detriment. One of the things that the two men shared was a love of chess, and she'd watched Matt lose countless games to Herb with never anything more bitter than a perplexed smile. "Next time, buddy," he'd say with a shrug.

"You could let him win once in a while," she'd once chided Herb.

"That's not the way to play," he'd snapped. She'd never brought it up again.

Matt was intensely loyal. And as much as Claire had lost in the last year, she knew that he'd lost almost as much. After the sudden break-up of his own marriage, he must have felt adrift and very much alone. Now, so did she.

No, Herb's indifference and deceit had already taken too much from her. She would not give up on Matt Ellis.

And on the heels of that decision, she made a fateful second.

"I'm not going home," she said with conviction. "Not tonight. Not to him. I'll book a room downtown near the office."

"You could stay with us," Matt offered mildly. "Just for a couple of days, while you two sort this thing out."

"It'll take more than a couple of days. A lot more." She drained her glass. "Kelsey won't mind?"

"She'll be glad for some company around the place besides dear old Dad. With Donna gone..." He let the sentence hang. "Kel's not around that much most days, anyway. She can't spend all her time trying to put her father back together."

"All right. Thanks." It was that easy.

Do you know what you're doing?

Claire asked herself. She gathered up her computer and purse and left the tip. Matt held the door for her, the kind of little thing Herb never bothered with anymore. Matt was taller, too, and she liked the way he smelled.

Fuck, yeah.

†††

"You are so beautiful."

The way that Matt said it thrilled Claire. She'd heard it often enough in her youth without ever believing it, but even that seemed a very long time ago. She knew that men still found her sexy. Her hips were full and her long legs tapered from generous and gently rounded hips down to trim ankles and small, high-arched feet. Her waist was still firm, but time had added a few extra pounds there and on her butt. She obsessed over that as well as over the slight middle-aged sag of her large breasts. Herb was the only man she'd been naked in bed with since their wedding.

But beautiful? She didn't see that in herself.

In that moment, she saw it reflected in Matt Ellis's eyes.

She lay down with him on the bed that he and Donna had shared, not so long ago, and reached for his erect cock. He groaned, pulling her close.

I suppose it's been a long time for him, too.

Matt's hands played over her tits and the flat of her stomach. He brushed his fingers over her clitoris but didn't linger, instead gently circling the outer edges of her labia. Her body opened to him. When he inserted a finger into her pussy slightly it felt so good she thought she'd come right then and there. Either she was more pent-up than she'd realized or he was just that good.

Holding Claire's hips firmly against the mattress with his strong hands, Matt kissed her hard nipples and worked his way down her belly to her legs. He trailed his tongue up her inner thigh and then circled her pussy lips as he had done with his fingers. She was seething with need now. When he touched the pointed tip of his tongue to her clitoris she started as if a firecracker had gone off. He patiently sucked and nibbled at the throbbing little bud until, after what seemed hours, he started slipping his tongue in and out of her vagina. She ran her hands through his hair and held his face against her slot, urging him on.

Before long Matt had her screaming and pounding her heels on the mattress.

Claire came twice before Matt climbed her body again to kiss her on the mouth. She savored the taste of him and the taste of her own pussy on his lips. She'd never felt so wicked. This tryst had been born out of a furious desire to punish her husband. Now, the primal need to fuck overwhelmed all else.

Matt was bigger than Claire was used to, much bigger than Herb. She flinched when he first penetrated her. That brief discomfort was quickly replaced by the nearly-forgotten glory of having a man inside her. She whimpered softly and squirmed beneath him, lifting her hips to meet him, gradually impaling herself on his hard, thick cock until he was completely inside. When he started moving in and out it was as if a dam burst inside her.

"That's it, baby, give it to me!" she pleaded, abandoning her last vestiges of reserve. "I want all of you...harder, goddamn it! Fuck me harder. Just fucking ram me!" She bucked against Matt's lengthening strokes, humping her pelvis upward each time he plunged down into her liquid depths. She crossed her ankles behind his back and flexed her legs, instinctively guiding him with her knees and thighs as she might a horse. He sensed what she wanted and moved to the rhythm that she set.

Claire had never fucked like this. It was as close to perfect as she could imagine. She wasn't sure what she'd expected of Matt as a lover, but certainly not this! He was unselfish and skillful and surprising.

I sure as hell wouldn't give this guy up. Why did Donna?

The troublesome question surfaced spontaneously in the throes of her passion and vanished as quickly in the onrushing joy of yet another climax.

Matt's body stiffened against hers. The muscles of his buttocks tightened, his thrusts grew shorter and more urgent and he ejaculated inside her. He came for a long time. She hugged him around his shoulders and held him close. Slowly his cock softened and he withdrew, collapsing next to her on the bed.

They lay together in silence for a while. Claire let her hand drift down to Matt's cock, curling her fingers around his balls. The fleshy pole twitched against her palm and swelled again, just slightly. "I don't think we're quite done for the afternoon, are we?" She pressed the length of her body against his.

"I sure hope not." Matt was a conundrum--unexpectedly confident and masterful as they'd made love, he'd now subsided again into the slightly bewildered passivity she recognized. "I should feel guilty. Herb's my closest friend."

"And I'm the bastard's

wife

. I sure as hell don't feel guilty. There's no reason you should."

"That's fair."

"He doesn't deserve your loyalty. I am so done with him, Matt."

"Because of the, uh, the--"

"The company orgies? Isn't that enough?" Claire reached for the bedsheet to cover herself as she sat up. She thought better of it and let the cloth fall back to expose her naked breasts. "But no, it's so much more than that. We've been in trouble for years. What I won't forgive is Noah. Herb wouldn't stand up for him, and he wouldn't let me help. And I can't forgive

myself

for giving in. Like it was up to him, and him alone, to decide Noah's fate. What kind of cold son of a bitch thinks that saving face is worth letting his son serve a three-year prison sentence?"