Chapter 8 - The Confession and the Cage
Three weeks later, the cold gray of November had stripped the trees bare along Maplewood Drive.
I sat in a small, windowless interrogation room at the county courthouse, separated from Priscilla by a thick partition of scratch-resistant plexiglass.
She looked unrecognizable.
The expensive hair treatments had faded; her roots were showing gray and dark brown. She wore an oversized orange institutional jumpsuit, her makeup entirely gone, revealing the sallow, hollow skin beneath her eyes. Her wrists were handcuffed to a steel ring bolted into the table on her side of the partition.
She picked up the plastic telephone receiver.
I picked up mine.
"You look pleased with yourself," she said, her voice raspy, devoid of its former melodic lilt.
"I'm filing the final divorce decree on Monday," I said, keeping my voice utterly devoid of emotion. "Marcus negotiated a complete waiver of spousal support. Given your felony indictments, the judge granted an immediate annulment of all marital property claims. You get nothing, Priscilla. Not a single cent."
She let out a dry, bitter cackle. "A single cent? Desmond, you always were so small-minded. You and your little architectural drawings, your safe little suburban life. Do you know how boring you are? Do you know how utterly soul-crushing it was to sit across from you every night listening to you talk about beam loads and foundation depth?"
"Is that why you tried to destroy my mother?"
Priscilla leaned forward, her face pressing close to the plexiglass. Her hazel eyes were cold, dead pools of spite.
"Your mother was an obstacle," she hissed. "Sitting on a million-dollar plot of land, hoarding her dead husband’s pension, while I was drowning. Julian had an investment pool in the Caymans. We were going to triple the money in six months. If I had gotten Eleanor into Oakridge, the power of attorney would have cleared the sale of the house by Christmas. I would have been in the south of France by spring."
"And me?" I asked quietly. "What were you going to do with me?"
Priscilla smiled—a grotesque, mocking grimace. "You would have been too busy mourning your poor, demented mother to notice. And once the money cleared, I would have left you a note. You were just a vehicle, Desmond. A comfortable, gullible vehicle."
The truth was laid bare. There had never been a single genuine moment between us. Six years of marriage had been an extended transaction, an investment strategy by a sociopath who viewed human beings as financial stepping stones.
Yet, hearing it didn't break me. It liberated me.
Every lingering shred of guilt, every ghost of affectionate memory, every sorrowful *what-if* that had haunted my sleep vanished into thin air. There was nothing to mourn, because the woman I thought I had loved had never existed.
"The prosecutor offered Vance a plea deal yesterday," I said calmly.
Priscilla’s smile vanished. "What?"
"Vance gave them everything," I continued. "He handed over your text messages. The ones where you asked him which sedatives wouldn't show up on a standard elderly health panel. The ones where you joked about putting Eleanor in an isolation ward where she wouldn't have visitors. The state has upgraded your charges to attempted second-degree murder, elder abuse causing great bodily injury, and four counts of aggravated forgery."
Priscilla’s breath hitched. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the receiver. "No. Julian wouldn't do that. He promised—"
"Julian is saving himself," I said. "The prosecutor said you're looking at fifteen to twenty years at the women's correctional facility in Bedford. You won't be seeing France, Priscilla. You won't even be seeing the sky without razor wire across it."
She stared at me, the reality of her life’s total collapse finally breaking through her narcissistic delusions. Her lower lip began to tremble. Her eyes filled with raw, unadulterated terror.
"Desmond... please," she whispered, her voice cracking as she pressed her handcuffed hands against the glass. "You can't do this to me. Talk to the prosecutor. Tell them it was a mental breakdown. Tell them I had postpartum depression or psychosis! I'll go to therapy! I'll do whatever you want! Please, Desmond... I can't go to prison. I won't survive in there!"
I stood up from the stool.
I looked down at her through the scratched glass.
"Oh, Priscilla," I said softly, mimicking the mocking tone she had used on my mother for three months. "Come on. It's just a family joke. You seriously can't take a joke?"
May you like
I hung up the plastic receiver, turned my back on her frantic, glass-banging screams, and walked out into the crisp, clean autumn air.
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