Chapter 5 - The Confrontation at Redgate
Two weeks later, I received a phone call from the regional detention center where my father was being held without bail pending his trial.
He had requested a private visitation. His lawyer stated that Arthur refused to sign the financial restitution paperwork that would return my stolen nine-million-dollar inheritance unless I came to see him face-to-face.
I walked into the visiting room of the high-security facility.
Sitting behind the thick pane of bulletproof glass was Arthur Vance. In just twenty days, he had aged twenty years. His expensive suit was gone, replaced by a bright orange prison jumpsuit. His hair was unkempt, his posture slumped, his eyes hollow and bloodshot.
I sat down in the plastic chair, picking up the heavy gray telephone receiver.
Arthur picked up his side.
“Emma,” he rasped, his voice thin and cracked. “You came.”
“Sign the restitution papers, Arthur,” I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion. “I’m not here to talk to you.”
Arthur pressed his face close to the glass, his fingers clutching the plastic frame. “You have to help me, Emma! The federal prosecutors are talking about life without parole! They’re putting me in a maximum-security facility! I won't survive in here! Your mother is living in poverty! Claire’s life is completely ruined! You have to tell the prosecutors that Ryan was mistaken! You have to drop the murder charge!”
I looked at him—this man who had controlled my life, ruled my childhood with fear, burned my memories, and murdered the man I loved.
“Ryan wasn't mistaken,” I said slowly. “He knew exactly who you were. And so do I.”
“I did it for the family!” Arthur cried out, tears of self-pity streaming down his wrinkled cheeks. “Everything I did, I did to keep us at the top! To build a legacy for you girls!”
“You didn't do it for us,” I countered cold, hard truth cutting through his lies. “You did it for your own sick, arrogant pride. You stole from me when I was twenty-four. You let Claire act like a queen while you treated me like a beggar. And when Ryan tried to stop you... you ran his car off the road.”
Arthur slammed his fist against the glass. “He was going to destroy me!”
“He was going to save me,” I corrected him.
I stood up, holding the phone to my ear for one last sentence.
“You burned his letters because you thought you could erase his voice,” I said quietly. “But his voice is the reason you are going to spend the rest of your life dying inside a concrete cell. Goodbye, Arthur.”
I hung up the receiver.
May you like
Behind the glass, Arthur began to scream, pounding his fists frantically against the window as the guards stepped forward to force him to his feet.
I turned my back on him and walked out into the sunlight.
