Chapter 36 - The Glass Cell
The visitor center at the county detention facility smelled of industrial bleach, floor wax, and human misery. A thick pane of scratched, grease-smudged polycarbonate glass divided the room into two rows of narrow metal cubicles.
I sat on the cold steel stool, holding the black plastic telephone receiver against my ear.
On the other side of the glass, the heavy steel door buzzed, and an officer escorted my father into the booth.
Robert Vance looked like an empty coat thrown over a chair. The silver hair that he used to style with expensive pomade was greasy and matted against his skull. The tailored shirts and gold cufflinks were gone, replaced by a garish orange jumpsuit that hung loosely from his shrinking frame. His eyes were bloodshot, surrounded by dark, bruised circles of terror and sleeplessness.
When he saw me, his face crumpled into an expression of desperate, theatrical relief. He grabbed the phone with trembling hands.
"Clara!" he sobbed into the receiver, his voice crackling through the cheap wire. "Clara, thank God! Thank God you came! The guards... they treat me like an animal in here. You have to get me out. You have to call the bail bondsman in Oakton—"
"I’m not getting you out, Robert," I said, my voice level, completely devoid of inflection.
He froze, the receiver hovering an inch from his mouth. He blinked, as if struggling to understand the words. "What did you say? Clara, I’m your father! You don't understand what happened—it was an accounting error! Those people from the finance company, they set me up! They took advantage of my trust!"
"You forged my name forty-two times," I stated, staring directly into his bloodshot eyes. "You put a lien on my home on the sound. You took the title to the only thing I owned and traded it to loan sharks so Hannah could drive an SLK convertible."
His eyes darted nervously to the left, then the right, avoiding my gaze. "Hannah was fragile, Clara! You know how sensitive your sister is! She couldn't handle the stress of the business failing! I was trying to protect her! I was going to pay it back—"
"With what?" I interrupted, leaning closer to the glass. "With what money, Robert? You haven't earned a dollar of honest income in fifteen years. You spent my grandfather’s trust, you spent the family liquidity, and then you spent seven years of my life. I gave you every paycheck. I ate canned beans in a studio apartment so you could keep up appearances at the country club."
"You owed us!" he suddenly hissed, the pathetic veneer cracking to reveal the ugly, entitled rot beneath. "We gave you life! We gave you an education! You think you’re better than us because you ran off to hide in the swamp? You abandoned us! If you had stayed, if you had helped me manage the portfolio, none of this would have happened! You destroyed this family when you left that key!"
I looked at him—this small, pathetic, vindictive man who had spent my entire youth making me feel like an intruder in my own home. I remembered the night of my twenty-fifth birthday: sitting alone at the kitchen table with a cupcake and a single match, watching the clock tick past midnight while he and my mother threw a lavish dinner party for Hannah’s return from a failed weekend in the Hamptons.
There was no anger left in me. There was only an immense, clean emptiness.
"Grandmother is alive," I said softly.
Robert stopped mid-breath. His face drained of color until his skin matched the gray concrete wall behind him. The plastic receiver shook violently in his hand.
"W-what?" he stammered, his lips turning white. "That's... that's a lie. She died in Zurich. I saw the certificate—"
"She’s in Richmond," I said. "She bought your debts from the Canadians. She owns every piece of paper you ever forged. And she made me the executor of the Vance estate."
"No," Robert whispered, pressing his forehead against the scratched glass, tears of pure terror spilling over his cheeks. "No, Clara, please. Not her. She’ll destroy us. You don't know what she’s like! She isn't human! Please, Clara, you have to protect us! You’re my daughter!"
"I am not your daughter," I said, standing up from the steel stool. "I am the debt collector."
I hung up the receiver. The dial tone clicked into the silence.
As I turned toward the exit, the heavy door at the far end of the room opened again, and an officer led Hannah into the neighboring booth. She saw me immediately. Her makeup was smeared across her pale face, her designer sweater torn at the shoulder, her eyes wide with frantic, childish panic.
"Clara!" she screamed through the glass, pounding her fists against the partition. "Clara, look at me! Tell them to let me go! Clara!"
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I didn't stop. I walked through the heavy steel door, listening to the solid, final thud of the magnetic locks engaging behind me.
***
