Chapter 9 - The Visit to Allenwood
I went to Pennsylvania only once.
It was a cold, rainy Thursday in late October, fourteen months after the night my leg was broken.
The Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution sat behind two layers of chain-link fence topped with razor wire, surrounded by the bleak, grey hills of central Pennsylvania.
I sat in a small, sterile visiting room with linoleum floors and yellow cinderblock walls, waiting behind a double-paned glass partition.
A door clicked open on the opposite side of the room.
David walked in, escorted by a single correctional officer.
He wore a loose, ill-fitting khaki jumpsuit stamped with his federal inmate number across the left pocket. His dark hair had been shaved close to his scalp, revealing the thin scar along his hairline from the night my father’s men had taken him down. He had lost at least thirty pounds, his cheekbones sharp, his hands trembling slightly as he sat on the metal stool across from me.
He picked up the black plastic phone receiver attached to the wall.
I picked up mine.
"Sarah," he said. His voice was thin, dry, stripped of every trace of the smooth, arrogant authority he had projected for three years.
"Hello, David," I said.
He looked at my right leg beneath the table, then up at my face. "How... how is your leg?"
"The bone healed," I replied flatly. "The titanium rod stays in forever."
David looked down at his hands, his knuckles raw and red from his work detail in the prison laundry. "My mother... she’s living in a studio apartment in Bridgeport. She’s working at a dry cleaner. She can't pay her medical bills, Sarah."
"Margaret receives her state pension, David," I said, my tone completely neutral. "Which is precisely what she left me with when you transferred my inheritance."
David swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward the guard standing near the door before returning to mine.
"Why did you come here?" he asked, his voice dropping into a raspy whisper. "Are you here to mock me? To show me how well you’ve done with your father’s money?"
"I came here to give you something," I said.
I pulled a single sheet of paper from my coat pocket and pressed it flat against the glass partition.
It was a copy of the legal decree issued by the Maine Family Court three weeks earlier.
Petition for Total Termination of Parental Rights and Legal Name Change.
Granted: Child Nicole Emma Vance renamed Nicole Emma Vance-Logistics Trust.
Father’s parental rights: Terminated with prejudice.
David stared at the document through the glass. His eyes widened, a sudden, sharp gasp escaping his throat as he realized what the paper meant.
"You took my name from her," he whispered, his chest heaving against his khaki jumpsuit. "She’s my daughter..."
"She was never your daughter, David," I said, holding his eyes through the glass. "She was a bargaining chip you tried to use to keep me silent while you broke my body."
May you like
I folded the paper, put it back into my coat pocket, and set the phone receiver back on its hook.
I didn't wait for him to speak again. I didn't wait to see the tears that began to spill over his hollow cheeks. I stood up, picked up my handbag, and walked out through the heavy steel door into the clear, cold Pennsylvania rain.
