Chapter 13: The Visitor at Riker’s
Two weeks later, I did something my brother Ethan begged me not to do.
I drove to the state correctional facility three hours north of the city. I didn't go to gloat, nor did I go out of lingering affection. I went because a storm cannot truly end until you stand in the eye of it and look it in the face.
The visitation room was cold, smelling of industrial floor wax, stale coffee, and bleach. I sat on one side of a thick plexiglass partition, resting my hands quietly on the counter.
The heavy steel door buzzed open, and Mark was led inside by two armed guards.
He looked unrecognizably smaller. The tailored Italian suits had been replaced by a baggy, faded navy jumpsuit. His hair was shaved short, his jaw was covered in rough stubble, and his hands were cuffed to a chain around his waist. When he sat down on the metal stool across from me, his eyes were bloodshot and hollow.
He picked up the black plastic telephone receiver. I picked up mine.
"Why are you here, Evelyn?" Mark asked, his voice crackling through the small speaker, flat and devoid of its old thunder. "Came to watch me rot?"
"I came to deliver a message in person, Mark," I said calmly.
He let out a short, bitter laugh. "You've already taken everything. My firm is gone. My mother is in a federal penitentiary in West Virginia. My reputation is dust. What else could you possibly want?"
"Your legal team filed an appeal to throw out my audio recording," I said. "I wanted you to hear this directly from me so you don't waste another dime of your family's stolen money."
I reached into my bag, pulled out a certified legal document, and pressed it flat against the reinforced glass.
Mark leaned in, his eyes straining to read the high court seal at the top of the page.
"That is a motion for summary dismissal signed by the State Supreme Court this morning," I explained. "The court ruled that the recording fell directly under the Domestic Violence Evidence Exception Act. Not only was the appeal rejected with prejudice, but the judge added two years to your mandatory sentence for frivolous litigation."
Mark froze. The small spark of hope he had been clinging to in his cell vanished, leaving behind an absolute, crushing despair.
"You ruined me," he whispered, his fingers tightening around the telephone receiver until his knuckles went white. "I gave you a life in the suburbs. I gave you a home! And you destroyed me over a piece of dirt in Pennsylvania!"
"You didn't give me a home, Mark," I said, leaning closer to the glass, my voice quiet and sharp as a scalpel. "You gave me a cage. You locked me beneath the stairs while my mother died. You hit me, you stole my name, and you treated me like an object to be traded between your investors."
"I was desperate!" he yelled, his voice cracking, causing the guard in the corner to take a step forward. "The market collapsed! I needed the capital!"
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"Desperation didn't make you a monster, Mark," I said softly. "It just revealed what you were all along."
I stood up, sliding the legal document back into my purse. I didn't wait for him to respond. I set the telephone receiver back onto its hook, turned my back on his frantic knocking against the glass, and walked out through the heavy iron doors into the crisp autumn sunlight.
