Chapter 9 - The Final Reckoning
Before I could fully settle into my new life helping Lily establish her coastal architecture firm, there was one final duty I had to fulfill.
A week before Richard Vance was scheduled to be transferred to a maximum-security federal penitentiary in Indiana to serve his fifty-year sentence, I requested a private visitor's pass to the holding facility.
I sat in a small, sterile visitation room, divided by a thick pane of bulletproof glass.
The heavy steel door on the opposite side clicked open, and two prison guards escorted Richard into the room.
The change in him was staggering. Gone were the tailored silk suits, the expensive French cuffs, and the arrogant, condescending smile. He wore a bright orange prison jumpsuit, heavy steel shackles around his ankles and wrists, and his hair was shorn short. His face was pale, thin, and sunken, haunted by the realization of his new reality.
He sat down heavily on the metal chair, picking up the telephone receiver with trembling hands.
I picked up my receiver.
"Why are you here?" Richard asked, his voice weak and raspy through the small speaker. "Have you come to gloat? To mock me?"
"No, Richard," I said calmly, my voice steady. "I came to look you in the eye one last time, as a free man looking at a prisoner."
Richard squeezed his eyes shut, a bitter tear rolling down his nose. "I lost everything... my family, my company, my life... all because of you."
"No, Richard," I corrected him firmly. "You lost everything because of you. You thought money and status gave you the right to destroy another human being. You thought because my daughter was kind and gentle, she had nobody standing behind her. You forgot that every child has a father, and some fathers are not to be played with."
Richard opened his eyes, looking at me through the glass. "She’ll never forget what I did to her. My shadow will follow her forever."
I smiled faintly, a quiet, triumphant smile that made Richard flinch.
"That's where you're wrong," I said softly. "I just left her at her new home on the coast. She's designing homes. She's laughing. She's breathing clean air. In six months, she won't even remember your name. You are not a shadow in her life, Richard. You're just a bad dream she woke up from."
Richard stared at me, speechlessly, as the reality of his complete insignificance washed over him.
I hung up the receiver, stood up from the stool, and turned my back on him.
May you like
"Guard," I called out calmly to the officer at the door. "I'm finished here."
As I walked down the long, echoey corridor toward the heavy steel exit doors, I heard Richard sobbing softly into his shackles behind the glass, left alone in the dark room he would inhabit for the rest of his natural life.
