Chapter 9 - THE FINAL CONFRONTATION
Two months passed.
The Charleston summer gave way to the crisp, golden beauty of early autumn. The scandal that had rocked the city's financial elite gradually receded from the front pages, replaced by new scandals, new mergers, and the relentless march of society gossip.
Halston Wealth Management had been dissolved, its assets liquidated to repay defrauded investors. Drew’s estate on Sullivan's Island had been sold at auction, and the Halston name had been quietly scrubbed from the boards of every historical society and charity foundation in the Lowcountry.
On a Tuesday afternoon, I received a formal request from the federal detention center in North Charleston.
Drew Halston, through his court-appointed public defender—having run out of funds for his elite white-collar defense team—had requested a visitation with me before his formal transfer to a federal penitentiary in Georgia to serve his eight-year sentence.
Julian had offered to come with me, but I knew this was something I needed to do alone. Not out of lingering affection, but to close the final ledger of my past.
The visitation room was cold, lit by harsh fluorescent tubes. A thick partition of reinforced acrylic separated the two rows of metal stools, with black telephone handsets mounted on either side.
A heavy metal door buzzed open, and a correctional officer escorted Drew into the cubicle opposite mine.
He looked unrecognizable.
His dark hair was cropped close to his scalp, streaked with gray. The designer suits were replaced by an ill-fitting orange jumpsuit. He had lost at least twenty pounds, his cheekbones jutting out sharply beneath hollow, tired eyes. The arrogant, polished prince of Charleston was gone; in his place sat a broken, aging convict.
Drew sat down on the metal stool, picking up the heavy plastic receiver with hands that trembled faintly.
I lifted mine to my ear.
"You came," Drew said. His voice sounded thin, tinny through the analog speaker.
"I came," I replied evenly.
Drew stared at me through the smudged glass. His eyes swept over me—my simple black cashmere sweater, my neat hair, the calm, untroubled expression on my face.
"You look beautiful, Maren," he whispered. "You look... peaceful."
"I am peaceful, Drew."
Drew looked down at his cuffed wrists resting on the cold stainless-steel counter. "My lawyer told me that your audit report was flawless. He said even the most aggressive defense team couldn't find a single procedural flaw to challenge the evidence. You destroyed me with surgical precision."
"I didn't destroy you, Drew," I corrected him gently. "You destroyed yourself. I merely documented the wreckage."
A bitter, humorless smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "Vanessa gave them the safe codes, didn't she?"
"She did."
"I gave that woman everything," Drew hissed, a flash of his old, ugly resentment flaring up before dying out just as quickly. "I gave her the world, and she handed me over to the feds without blinking."
"You didn't give her the world, Drew. You gave her stolen money and asked her to be an accomplice to your vanity. You treated her as an accessory, just like you treated me. When the ship sank, she saved herself. You shouldn't be surprised."
Drew closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool glass. "Do you hate me, Maren?"
The question hung in the air, heavy and loaded.
Five years ago, I had hated him with an intensity that kept me awake at three in the morning. I had hated him for his cruelty, for the casual way he tossed five years of marriage into the trash, for making me feel like I was unlovable.
I looked at him now through the scratched glass.
"No, Drew," I said, and the truth of it rang clear and pure in my soul. "I don't hate you. To hate someone, you have to care about what they think. You have to grant them power over your emotions. I feel the exact same way about you as I feel about the strangers walking down Meeting Street right now. I wish you no harm, but you have no place in my story anymore."
Drew looked up, his bloodshot eyes widening. The realization hit him harder than any insult, harder than any scream of fury.
Indifference.
The ultimate punishment for a man who craved worship was complete, total irrelevance.
"I'm going away for eight years, Maren," Drew whispered, a single tear escaping his eye and tracing the line of his hollow cheek. "When I get out... I’ll have nothing. No license, no money, no family. Nothing."
"You reap what you sow, Drew," I said, rising from the metal stool. "You spent your entire life believing that love was a competition and that people were pawns. Maybe in those eight years, you'll finally learn how to look in a mirror without looking for an audience."
"Maren, wait—" he pleaded, pressing his palm flat against the glass partition.
I didn't wait.
May you like
I hung the black receiver back on its metal cradle. I turned my back on the glass, walked through the heavy steel door, and stepped out into the bright autumn afternoon.
***
