Chapter 19 - The Price of Freedom
For two agonizing minutes, the only sound in the courthouse conference room was the harsh, rattling breath of my mother. She looked at her public defender, who simply shook his head and whispered, "Sign it, Mrs. Vance. If this goes to a grand jury, you will die behind bars."
She looked at my father, who kept his face buried in his trembling hands, refusing to meet her gaze.
Finally, she looked at me. There was no mother left in those eyes. Only a deep, bottomless well of venom.
"You will burn in hell for this, Emma," she hissed, her voice vibrating with venom. "I carried you for nine months. I fed you, I clothed you, I gave you a name that meant something in this state. You are nothing without me. Nothing!"
"I am Lily’s mother," I said softly, feeling a weight I had carried since childhood lift off my chest like evaporating mist. "And that is infinitely more than you ever were to me."
Eleanor snatched the pen from her attorney's hand. With trembling, furious strokes, she scribbled her name across the three signature lines, throwing the pen across the room when she finished. It bounced off the wall with a sharp plastic click.
"Get out," Julian said simply.
Eleanor didn't say another word. She grabbed her designer purse, wrenched her mink coat tightly around her shoulders, and practically ran from the room, the heavy oak doors slamming behind her with a definitive boom that reverberated down the hallway.
My father stayed seated for a moment longer. He slowly raised his head, his eyes bloodshot and hollow. He looked at me, his lip quivering.
"Emma..." he croaked. "I'm sorry. I was afraid of her. For forty years, I was terrified she’d leave me with nothing."
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"You already have nothing, Dad," I said, feeling no anger toward him, only a vast, empty pity. "Take care of yourself in Springfield. But don't call my house again."
Arthur lowered his head, wiped his nose with a frayed handkerchief, and shuffled out behind his wife, an old man walking into the ruins of his own cowardice.
