Chapter 15 - The Golden Boy's Reckoning
Nathan’s holding cell smelled of floor disinfectant and human despair. Through the heavy, wire-reinforced glass of the visiting booth, my twenty-two-year-old brother looked entirely unmoored.
His designer polo shirt was wrinkled and stained with sweat, his styled blond hair was a greasy, tangled mess, and his eyes were swollen from crying. He sat on the metal stool, his hands cuffed to a chain around his waist, watching me sit down on the visitor’s side through the glass partition.
I hadn’t planned on coming. Diane had advised against it. But the prosecutor had informed us that Nathan was attempting to negotiate a plea deal, claiming he was an "unwitting pawn" who only wanted to "reunite the family." I needed to look him in the eye to ensure the prosecutor understood there would be no leniency granted on my behalf.
I picked up the black plastic telephone receiver. Nathan scrambled to grab his on the other side, slamming it against his ear.
"Emily! Emily, please, God, you have to talk to them!" His voice was cracking, tumbling out in frantic, desperate bursts through the static of the receiver. "It’s a mistake! I didn’t know Dad was going to go there with a hammer! I swear to God I didn’t know! He told me he just wanted to talk to you, to apologize!"
"You forged my signature, Nathan," I said, my tone flat, stripped of all inflection.
"It was just a credit card!" he wailed, tears spilling down his cheeks. "We didn’t have any money for food! Dad said you stole all our savings when you emptied the joint accounts! Mom was freezing in the living room, Emily! Her lips were blue! I had to do something!"
"The joint accounts were filled with *my* salary," I told him, leaning slightly closer to the glass. "Every dollar in those accounts came from my sixty-hour work weeks while you slept until noon and Dad drank bourbon in his leather chair. You stole my identity to hire a private investigator. You gave a violent man my address after he nearly put me in an ICU."
"He's your father!" Nathan screamed, his voice drawing a warning glance from the guard standing near the door. "You know how he gets! If I didn't help him find you, he was going to turn on me! He smashed my laptop, Emily! He shoved Mom against the wall! I had to give him something to get him out of the apartment!"
The ugly, pathetic truth spilled out into the open air. He hadn't given our father my address out of ignorance. He had sacrificed me as a decoy. He had pointed the predator toward me so that he could save his own skin.
"You threw me to the wolves to save yourself," I said softly.
Nathan froze, his mouth hanging half-open, realizing what he had just admitted. "No... no, Em, that's not what I meant. You're strong. You always know how to handle him. You always took care of everything! I’m just a kid, Emily! I have my whole life ahead of me! If I get a felony record, I can't finish my degree, I can't get a job—"
"You're twenty-two years old, Nathan," I interrupted, cutting through his self-pity like a razor. "When I was twenty-two, I was working two jobs, paying Dad’s back taxes so the house wouldn't be seized, and paying your tuition at St. Jude's Academy. You are not a kid. You are a criminal."
"Emily, please!" He began slamming his cuffed hands against the steel counter, the metal clattering violently. "Tell the DA it was a family misunderstanding! Drop the charges! Mom is sleeping on a couch at Aunt Clara's! She’s taking blood pressure medication! If I go to prison, it will kill her!"
"Then let her die," I said.
The words left my mouth without a flicker of hesitation. Nathan stopped moving entirely. His eyes widened, his face draining of what little color it had left, as if he had just watched a stranger take off my skin.
"What did you just say?" he whispered.
"On Thanksgiving night, while Dad had his hands wrapped around my throat, Mom looked at me and said, 'You brought this on yourself, Emily.' She watched him beat me until my blood was on her good linen tablecloth, and her only concern was that I was ruining the evening."
I stood up from the stool, holding the receiver firmly to my ear so he couldn't miss a single syllable.
"You brought this on yourself, Nathan. You forged the papers. You hired the tracker. You gave him the weapon. You will serve every month, every day, and every minute the judge gives you. I am not your sister anymore. I am the plaintiff."
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"Emily! Don't hang up! Emily!"
I slammed the receiver onto its metal cradle, turned my back on the glass partition, and walked through the heavy steel doors into the bright, unyielding daylight.
