Chapter 3 - The Face of the Coward
The visitation room in the county jail was cold, sterile, and lit by buzzing fluorescent tubes. A thick pane of shatterproof glass separated the two sides of the booth, flanked by heavy steel doors.
Trevor was led into the room by a correction officer.
He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed at his waist, his eyes red, swollen, and terrified. When he saw me standing on the other side of the glass holding the black telephone receiver, he dropped onto the stool, his chest heaving with desperate, pathetic sobs.
I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear. I didn't sit down.
Trevor grabbed his phone with both cuffed hands. "Clara... Clara, oh God, please listen to me!" his voice wailed through the small speaker. "You have to believe me! I didn't know she was going to kill them! I thought... she told me it was just going to make them sick! Just enough to get the insurance payout to fix the escrow account!"
"You handed me the bottle, Trevor," I said. My voice was completely flat, devoid of anger, devoid of grief, devoid of anything human. "You stood in our kitchen at eleven o'clock at night, looked at your three-month-old sons, and handed me the bottle that stopped their hearts."
"She manipulated me, Clara!" Trevor wept, pressing his forehead against the cold glass. "You know how she is! She's controlled my entire life! She threatened to tell the managing partners about the money! I was terrified! I didn't want to lose you and the kids!"
"You didn't want to lose your reputation," I corrected him. "You didn't want to go to a prison cell. So you traded Leo and Noah for your luxury car and your tailored suits."
"Clara, please!" Trevor begged, his eyes wild with terror. "Tell the detective I didn't know! If you testify that I was a good father, they'll drop the murder charges down to negligence! I can get out in five years! We can start over with Emma—"
"If you ever speak my daughter's name again, Trevor," I interrupted, leaning closer to the glass until my breath fogged the surface, "I will personally ensure that every single prisoner in this facility knows exactly what you did to your twin boys."
Trevor froze. The color drained from his face until he looked like a corpse.
"You are not a father," I whispered through the phone. "You are a monster who hid behind his mother's skirt while she murdered our children. And you are going to rot in a cage for the rest of your life."
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I set the telephone receiver back onto its wall cradle with a quiet, decisive click.
I turned my back on the man I had loved for six years, ignoring his frantic, screaming blows against the glass, and walked through the heavy steel doors back into the bright, clean light of day.
