Preface

Nancy flew back into town and put a stop payment on our final paychecks. We had checks bouncing all over town for a week. She was furious when Peter asked her about the loan she allegedly made to the company. She said we didn’t know what we were talking about, there was a loan that she made to the company. Peter asked her to prove it and she hung up the phone on him. She didn’t even try to deny that the tax returns showed a yearly net loss.

She changed the locks to the store and told us that if we even walked by the shop, she would call the mall security. She actually called mall security on my brother who was walking through the mall one day. When they came up to him, they asked him what he was doing. He said, "Walking through the mall and shopping." They said, "We were called because you were harassing and threatening Nancy."

When he told them that was ridiculous, they went to ask the salesgirl what she had seen. She told them she hadn’t seen anything so they let him go. When the security guy walked him up to the store to talk to the salesgirl, my brother saw the salespeople in there with the gates down packing all of the jewelry into boxes. Nancy was beginning to get completely out of control but we had no idea how bad it was going to get.

Peter told her that he had left a pair of pants and other personal items in the shop. She said she would give them to him, but to this day we have received none of the many items she promised to return to him.

When the moving truck came to our house to pick up the boxes and things she had moved there from Lexington, the driver told us that she told him we were "dangerous" and if we made any moves he should "call the police." We just laughed, he did too, but it was a hint of things to come.

Nancy told one of our major diamond suppliers that we stole all of the diamonds out of her store and she was not going to pay him for the diamonds. She advised him to ask us for payment for the diamonds. He knew we were in the process of trying to open our own shop. We had been in contact with him to let him know that if a bank loan came through we would need to buy diamonds from him. So when Nancy told him the diamonds were gone, he called us and asked us what was going on. We told him that when we left we did not take a single piece of inventory but when Nancy came back she had all of the salespeople pack up the jewelry into boxes. We went over the list of diamonds he had recently sent us for inventory, some of them had sold and we told him the client’s name and then we described the rings that the other diamonds were set in.

Without warning Nancy, he flew up from Atlanta to check the store. He found every single diamond that she claimed was stolen in the shop in the rings we described. Nancy began to get hysterical and cry, telling him that "Peter raped me." He said, "What are you talking about?" She just cried harder and said, "Peter raped me."

Because we did not have a store yet, we were making jewelry in our basement. A client for whom we were making a bracelet walked into the store and heard her commotion that day. The client heard her sobbing and screaming over and over, "Peter raped me, Peter raped me." He called us and told us he was canceling the bracelet. When we asked him why, he told us the story and said he did not want to do business with anyone in a situation like that. The whole thing sounded sick to him and he did not want to do business with us or the store. The gold for the bracelet had cost us almost $900, pretty much all of our money since she had put a stop payment on our final paychecks. The client had given us no deposit yet so we were completely out all of the money and the bracelet was nearly finished.

That night we met with the diamond dealer who told us Nancy claimed all kinds of things; we were on drugs, we stole jewelry and cash, Peter raped her, I threatened her life, we moved to Tahiti or somewhere, she had no idea where we were, and on and on. He told her that he heard we were trying to open our own shop. She told him that we had been turned down for a bank loan. He said she was crazy. I was speechless. I truly did not know what to think. None of what she said was true, it was horrible. In the months that followed, after our store was open, we had clients come in nearly everyday telling us she told them the same things.

One of our clients, a friend with whom we had lost touch, came into her store and asked how to get in touch with us. Nancy told her that we stole everything and moved to Tahiti or somewhere, where we were living off of all of her stolen money. At this time, Nancy had moved into a townhouse approximately 2 blocks away from our house and drove by our house regularly. The client was at the mall one day when Nancy was not in the store. She asked a salesperson where we were and they told her about our shop. She was very angry about being lied to. I told her she was one of thousands who was lied to by Nancy.

It was insane, we had clients coming in and asking us why we were not allowing Nancy to see Pierson. She never asked to see Pierson. Pierson saw her on the day he was born and a few other times as an infant, but in his entire life she has never asked to see him. She has never sent him a card, birthday or Christmas present, absolutely nothing. She never even attempted to make contact with him before she went crazy and started spreading vicious lies about us. I don’t even think she ever owned a picture of him.

Nancy acted like a spurned lover and with her rape allegations, and the fact that I knew she had paraded around naked in her apartment in front of him when he was a teenager (he slept on a futon\couch in the living room and did not have his own private bedroom,) I began to wonder if she had molested Peter when he was a boy. I finally worked up the nerve to ask him, to which he flatly and rather angrily said, "No, why would you think such a thing?" I told him that I found it really strange that she acted more like a jilted lover than anything else and she seemed fixated on the rape accusation. She acted sexually inappropriately around him as a teenager, and later as an adult sharing details of her sex life.  I couldn’t and still can't think of anything more sick than to falsely accuse your own son of rape.

To get health and life insurance policies we took all kinds of tests, including drug tests. Peter called her and told her that we passed the drug screenings and we weren’t on drugs so stop saying that. Before she hung up on him she said those tests didn’t prove anything. 

The worst part about it was that Peter’s grandparents believed her. When he tried to explain what Nancy was saying about us and what she had done to us, his grandfather said he didn’t know anything about that. He advised Peter that it was just a ‘bad argument’ and she was still his mother, so out of respect for her status as such Peter should just apologize and make up with her. Peter called his mom one day to attempt to "make up" with her like his grandfather wanted. Before hanging up on him, Nancy told him she was too busy to talk to him. She was not willing to stop or "make up," she was angry and wanted to make us pay for our perceived betrayal.

The truth was that we knew the hard cold truth about her and it wasn't pretty.  I imagine she did not want her sisters and parents finding out what kind of things she had done to us and with her company.  She wasn't the success she pretended to be, she wasn't the high class, high roller, big time jeweler she liked to pretend she was.  I discovered the truth about her and Peter believed it.  We would never be forgiven for that.