Chapter 12: The Serpent in Cages
The visitor's room at the Fairfield County Correctional Facility smelled of floor wax, stale coffee, and industrial bleach.
A thick sheet of bulletproof plexiglass separated my chair from the metal stool on the other side. Behind me stood two armed corrections officers, their hands resting casually on their belts.
The heavy steel door on the defendant's side clicked open.
Gwen was led into the room, wearing a baggy, bright orange jumpsuit. Her hands were handcuffed to a leather belly chain, her ankles shackled together with heavy iron links that clinked with every shuffling step she took.
The immaculate silver bob was gone. Her hair was unwashed, limp, and streaked with gray. Without her designer clothes and tailored makeup, she looked like what she truly was: an exhausted, bitter, seventy-four-year-old woman who had run out of lies.
She sat down heavily on the metal stool, the chains rattling against the stainless-steel counter. She looked at me through the glass, her pale blue eyes sunken and bloodshot.
"You look well, Andrew," she rasped through the small metal speaker grill in the wall. "Boston air seems to agree with you."
"I'm alive, Gwen," I said, keeping my voice dead even, resting my hands on my knees. "Which is more than you can say for your freedom."
Gwen let out a harsh, dry cackle that turned into a hacking cough. "Freedom? I owned you for forty years, Andrew! Forty years! Every single Sunday, you sat in that kitchen and took my casseroles! You cried on my shoulder! You thought I was your guardian angel while I was using your estate's dividends to pay for my luxury condos in Miami!"
"And now you're going to die in a concrete box," I replied softly. "While my children use your father's fortune to save the lives you tried to ruin."
Gwen’s face contorted, her hands slamming against the counter, the iron chains clattering loudly. "They're not your children! They're Vances! They have royal blood in their veins, not the grease of a grease-monkey mechanic from Connecticut! You were nothing to Clara! A convenience! A pawn her father used to keep me away from my birthright!"
I didn't get angry. I didn't raise my voice. I leaned closer to the glass, looking into the hollow, terrified eyes of the woman who had tormented my soul for half my life.
"Clara loved me," I whispered. "She loved me enough to hide in the dark for seven years just to keep our children safe from you. She loved me enough to write my name on every page of her diary until her heart stopped. You spent forty years chasing money, Gwen... and you ended up with nothing but an orange suit and a cold floor."
Gwen stared at me, her chest heaving, her lips trembling as the absolute, crushing weight of her failure finally hit her. The venom in her eyes drained away, replaced by a cold, hollow panic.
"Andrew..." she stammered, her voice suddenly dropping into a pathetic, desperate whine. "Please... tell the prosecutor to accept the plea deal. I can't die in prison, Andrew. I'm your sister-in-law. We were family..."
I stood up from the plastic chair, adjusting the collar of my dark coat.
"My sister-in-law died forty years ago on a bridge in the rain," I said coldly. "You're just a stranger who stayed too long."
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I turned my back on her and walked toward the exit door. Behind me, Gwen began to scream—a loud, screeching, pathetic sound that echoed off the cinderblock walls—as the guards pulled her off the stool and dragged her back to her cell.
I stepped out into the crisp, bright afternoon air, where Lily and Toby were waiting for me beside the car.
