Chapter 6 - The Visitor in Orange
Five days after giving birth, I was authorized to leave the hospital. But before I packed up Clara’s clothes to go to my new apartment in Sacramento, I made one stop.
The visitor’s room at the Napa County Detention Center was stark, grey, and separated by thick panels of bulletproof plexiglass.
I sat on the cold wooden chair on the visitor's side, wearing a simple navy sweater and jeans. I had brought Clara with me in a chest carrier, her tiny head resting against my heart beneath my coat.
The heavy steel door on the inmate side opened.
Julian stepped into the room.
He looked unrecognizable. In less than a week, his sun-kissed, country-club polish had completely vanished. He was wearing an oversized orange jumpsuit, plastic slip-on shoes, and his eyes were dark, bloodshot, and sunken.
He sat down across from me, his hands shaking as he picked up the gray plastic inter-com phone.
I picked up mine.
"Audrey..." his voice was cracked, desperate, and pathetic. "Audrey, thank God you came. You have to fix this. You have to tell the Attorney General that you made a mistake!"
I stared at him through the glass. "A mistake, Julian?"
"The wiretaps! The spreadsheets!" he babbled, pressing his hand against the glass. "Tell them it was just an accounting error! Tell them I didn't know what I was signing! My mother... my mother is losing her mind in here, Audrey! They won't even let Seraphina have her beauty products! They're treating us like criminals!"
"You are criminals, Julian," I said, my voice dropping into that calm, terrifying clarity that used to make his mother grind her teeth. "You stole four million dollars from state infrastructure grants. You paid migrant workers three dollars an hour while charging them six hundred dollars a month to live in converted sheds without running water. You forged tax returns for six years."
"We shared a bed, Audrey!" Julian yelled, his eyes wild. "I loved you! I brought you into my family!"
"You brought me into your family so I could be your shield," I corrected him. "You thought because I came from a working-class background, because I didn't boast about money or buy five-thousand-dollar handbags, that I was stupid. You thought I was your quiet little accountant who would keep her mouth shut while your family walked all over her."
Julian’s face flushed dark red. "I protected you from my mother! She wanted me to dump you before the wedding! I stood up for you!"
"You let your mother call me a charity case at dinner every Sunday," I said. "You let your sister treat me like a maid. And when my water broke on your sister's precious marble terrace, you left me locked in a room so I wouldn't ruin a photo shoot."
I leaned forward, bringing my face closer to the glass.
"You didn't protect me, Julian. You sacrificed me. But you picked the wrong woman to sacrifice."
Julian looked down at the chest carrier beneath my coat. His breath hitched. "Is that... is that the baby?"
"Her name is Clara," I said softly.
Julian took a trembling breath, reaching a hand out toward the glass. "Audrey... let me see her. Please. She’s a Sterling. She deserves to know her father—"
"She is not a Sterling," I interrupted, my voice dropping like a heavy iron guillotine. "Yesterday morning, a family court judge signed an emergency order revoking all parental rights for Julian Sterling based on child endangerment, felony abandonment, and active incarceration."
Julian’s eyes went wide with pure terror. "What?! You can't do that! She’s my daughter!"
"She is my daughter," I said, standing up from the chair. "Her last name is Vance. She will never step foot on Sterling Ridge. She will never hear your mother’s voice. And when she grows up, I will tell her that her mother was the woman who put her father behind bars where he belongs."
I hung up the phone.
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Julian slammed his fists against the bulletproof glass, screaming my name, but his voice was completely drowned out by the thick plastic. Two heavy guards stepped forward, grabbing his arms, forcing him back through the steel door into the dark corridors of the jail.
I turned my back on him and walked out into the bright California sun.
