Chapter 8 - The Prison Visitor
Three weeks later.
I sat behind a partition of reinforced glass in the visiting room of the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution.
The heavy steel door on the opposite side buzzed, and Eleanor walked in, escorted by a female corrections officer.
She looked unrecognizable. The blonde hair that she had touched up every three weeks was now streaked with thick roots of gray. She wore an oversized orange prison jumpsuit, her skin pale, sallow, and wrinkled without her expensive creams and cosmetic procedures. Her hands trembled as she sat down on the metal stool across from me.
She picked up the plastic telephone receiver.
I picked up mine.
"You came," Eleanor whispered, her voice raspy and broken.
"I came to deliver one last thing," I said calmly.
Eleanor pressed her hand against the glass, tears pooling in her sunken eyes. "Jane... please. You have to talk to the prosecutor. Arthur is in a federal medical facility in Pennsylvania—his heart is failing. Marcus was beaten up by his cellmate last week. And look at me, Jane! Look at what this place is doing to me!"
"I see you, Eleanor," I said softly.
"They're going to sentence us next month," she sobbed, her fingers leaving smudges on the glass. "The lawyer says I'm looking at twelve years. Twelve years, Jane! I'll be seventy-five when I get out! I'll die in here!"
"You chose this path," I replied. "Every time you stole money from a charity, every time you blackmailed Samuel, every time you put Marcus's greed over human lives... you built this cell yourself."
"I was your mother!" she cried out, drawing glances from the guards along the wall. "I gave you life!"
"And you tried to drain the life out of everyone around you," I said. "Samuel spent his final years protecting me from you. He knew that one day, I would have to stand on my own two feet without his protection. And he gave me the weapons to do it."
I pulled a small envelope from my purse and pressed it flat against the glass screen.
Inside was a single printed photograph.
It was a picture of a newly dedicated oak bench in the central city park, overlooking the duck pond where Samuel and Penelope used to play every Sunday afternoon.
Engraved on the bronze plaque fixed to the back of the bench were three simple lines:
In Loving Memory of Samuel and Penelope Hayes. Forever Loved. Forever Remembered. Truth Prevails.
Eleanor stared at the photograph, her mouth trembling, realizing that there was no mention of the Hayes family legacy, no mention of her, and no place for her in the memory of the people who actually mattered.
"They are at peace, Eleanor," I said, my voice steady and unwavering. "And so am I."
May you like
I set the telephone receiver back onto its hook, stood up, and turned my back on my mother.
She pounded frantically against the glass, her muffled screams echoing behind me as the heavy steel door buzzed open, releasing me back into the bright, clean air of the outside world.
