Chapter 38 - The Mother's Plea
Three days later, Ethan, Leo, and Maya were settled into a heavily guarded private wing on the fourteenth floor of Massachusetts General Hospital.
Medical teams were running full toxicology panels, reversing the vitamin deficiencies and muscle atrophy from Ethan’s confinement. Leo and Maya had finally stopped flinching at loud noises; they sat in the hospital playroom, coloring pictures of a house with a tall fence and a sun that had a smiling face.
I sat in an armchair by the reinforced window, watching the rain wash over the Boston skyline. My phone, plugged into an encrypted federal rerouter on the bedside table, began to vibrate.
It was an incoming collect call from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
I tapped the speaker button.
"Claire?"
The voice that came through the small speaker was hollow, raspy, and stripped of every ounce of the haughty, country-club arrogance it had carried for fifty years. It was my mother, Eleanor.
I said nothing. I only listened to the hum of the prison phone line.
"Claire... please, God, I know you’re listening," Eleanor sobbed, her voice breaking into ragged gasps. "They have me in a cell with concrete floors, Claire. They took my clothes. They took my medication. The women in here... they’re monsters, Claire, they scream all night long!"
Still, I remained silent, my heart steady, cold as marble.
"You have to tell the prosecutors the truth!" Eleanor pleaded, her tone shifting into that familiar, manipulative cadence she had used to control me since childhood. "We were victims, Claire! Arthur Vance threatened us! He said if we didn't sign the proxy agreements, he would kill Evelyn! We did it to protect your sister! Can't you understand that? A mother protects her children!"
"A mother protects her children," I repeated quietly, speaking into the receiver for the first time.
Eleanor gasped, clinging to the sound of my voice. "Yes! Exactly! You understand, don't you? You're a mother too! You know what I had to do—"
"I stood in a cemetery in the pouring rain, Mother," I cut in, my voice dangerously calm, cutting through her hysterics like a razor. "I lowered three empty boxes into the mud. I begged you to come. I begged you to hold my hand for ten minutes so I wouldn't throw myself into the grave."
"Claire, we had Evelyn's birthday—we couldn't cause a scene, we—"
"You drank champagne while my children were locked in soundproofed rooms twenty miles off the coast," I said. "You took ten million dollars to declare my husband dead. You told my five-year-old son that his daddy was rotting in the dirt."
"We didn't know they would hurt them! Arthur swore they would just be relocated abroad!" she wailed. "Claire, please! Robert is having heart palpitations in the infirmary! Evelyn is suicidal! You have the federal judge's ear! Just sign an affidavit saying it was a family misunderstanding! We'll give you the bonds! We'll give you everything!"
"You have nothing left to give," I whispered. "The federal government has seized the Sterling estate. The brownstone in Boston, the house in Nantucket, Evelyn’s penthouse, the offshore trusts. It's all gone. Every single penny is being placed into a restitution fund for Ethan, Leo, and Maya."
"You... you can't leave us here..." Eleanor’s voice dropped into a horrified whisper. "We're your family, Claire. We gave you life!"
"My family is sitting in the room next to me," I said, watching through the glass door as Ethan helped Maya stack wooden blocks. "You are just a stranger serving a thirty-year sentence for kidnapping."
May you like
I hung up the phone. Then, with deliberate care, I took the SIM card out, snapped it in half between my thumb and forefinger, and tossed it into the biohazard bin.
***
