Chapter 69 - The Taste of Cold Water
The interrogation room at the Charlottesville federal building was small, sterile, and cold.
Eleanor Holloway sat behind the laminate table, her hands chained to an iron ring welded to the center. Her designer coat had been confiscated; she wore an oversized orange jumpsuit that swallowed her frail, brittle frame. The aristocratic mask had completely dissolved, leaving only the bitter, hollow bones of an aging woman who had bet everything on the wrong child.
When the door clicked shut behind me, she didn't look up immediately.
"They won't let me have coffee," she said, her voice flat, devoid of its former performative grace. "They say it's a security hazard."
I pulled out the metal chair opposite her and sat down. I didn't speak. I simply watched her.
"Claire was my masterpiece, June," she muttered, her eyes tracing the scuff marks on the table. "I built her. I shaped her manners, her voice, her taste. She was supposed to carry this family into the Governor's circle. You... you were always so stubborn. So dirty. Always running through the briars with your grandmother, smelling of soil and grease."
"Grandmother knew what you were," I said softly.
Eleanor’s chin twitched. "Your grandmother was a senile peasant who died clutching an empty box."
"The box wasn't empty, Eleanor," I said. "The box held the deed. And the ledger. The ledger that names your father, your husband, and your precious Julian Sterling."
Eleanor went very quiet. The cold fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a persistent, low drone that filled the silence.
"Claire will get twenty years," she whispered, her voice finally trembling, a crack appearing in the iron porcelain of her ego. "She can't survive in a cage, June. You know how delicate her nerves are. She’ll die in there."
"Claire tried to strangle me with a silk scarf while I slept in my bed," I said, leaning forward until our eyes were level. "And the morning after, you walked into my hospital room with a latte and told me to drop the charges so her social calendar wouldn't be disturbed."
I stood up. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the paper coffee cup I had bought in the lobby, and set it gently on the table in front of her.
It wasn't Starbucks. It was a paper cup filled with plain, cold tap water.
"You spent your whole life pretending that appearances were the only currency that mattered," I said, my voice steady, clear, untainted by the bitterness that had haunted me since childhood. "Now you have all the time in the world to stare at the walls and count your dividends."
I turned toward the door.
"June," she called out, a frantic, desperate gasp. "June! What about me? Where do I go?"
I paused at the threshold, looking back at her over my shoulder.
May you like
"Nowhere," I said. "You stay right here."
***
