Chapter 36 - The Visit
The drive to the state penitentiary was long and shrouded in a heavy, gray overcast sky. Daniel insisted on driving me, refusing to let me face the ghosts of my past entirely alone, though he agreed to wait in the car during the actual visitation.
"You don't owe him anything, Nora," Daniel said as he parked the car outside the bleak, towering concrete fortress. "If you walk in there and decide you want to turn around, you do it. You are in complete control."
"I know," I smiled, leaning over to kiss his cheek. "I will be back soon."
I walked through the metal detectors and the heavy, buzzing steel doors. The air inside the prison was stale, smelling of bleach, sweat, and despair. I was escorted by a guard down a long, echoing corridor to the maximum-security medical wing.
The visitation room was divided by a thick pane of smudged plexiglass. I sat down in a hard plastic chair and waited.
A few minutes later, the door on the opposite side opened. A guard wheeled Arthur Vance into the room.
I barely recognized the man sitting in the wheelchair. The imposing, terrifying patriarch who had ruled my childhood with an iron fist was gone. In his place was a frail, emaciated old man. His skin was yellowed from the failing liver, his hair was thinning, and he looked incredibly small in the oversized orange jumpsuit.
He picked up the heavy black telephone receiver with trembling hands. I picked up mine.
"Nora," he croaked, his voice weak and reedy, tears instantly springing to his sunken eyes. "You came. My beautiful girl, you came."
I did not smile. I did not flinch. I stared at him with absolute, icy detachment. "I am here, Arthur. You have three minutes."
He swallowed hard, clearly taken aback by my coldness. He had expected the terrified, obedient daughter he used to control.
"I am dying, Nora," he wept, pressing his frail hand against the plexiglass. "The pain is unbearable. I lay awake every night, haunted by what I did to you in that ballroom. I was desperate for money. I lost my mind. Please, I am begging you... forgive me. Tell me you forgive your father so I can find some peace."
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I looked at his hand against the glass. I remembered that same hand striking me across the face, shattering my bone, simply because I refused to be a pawn in his financial fraud.
"You didn't lose your mind, Arthur," I said, my voice dropping to a quiet, lethal register. "You made a calculated business decision. You decided my life was worth less than a luxury car and a country club membership. You tried to break me."
