Chapter 7 - The Voice Behind the Glass
Harrison tapped the green icon on the speakerphone console.
The automated, mechanical voice of the county inmate telecommunications service echoed through the quiet hospital room:
YOU HAVE A COLLECT CALL FROM AN INMATE AT THE MONTEREY COUNTY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. TO ACCEPT CHARGES, PRESS ONE. TO DECLINE—
"Press one, Harrison," I commanded quietly.
Beep.
The connection clicked live with a rush of industrial static, followed immediately by the hollow, frantic clatter of steel doors and muffled sobbing in the background.
"Fallon! Fallon, is that you?!"
Althia’s voice did not sound like the aristocratic matriarch who had smoothed her silver lace gown on the terrace of the Cliffside Resort.
It was shrill, cracked, and vibrating with an ugly, ragged terror that sounded like dry paper tearing in the wind.
"I am here, Althia," I said.
The use of her first name hit the line like a physical blow.
A sharp, hitching gasp came through the receiver.
"Althia?! You call your own mother by her first name while she is sitting in a concrete cage?!" Althia wailed, her voice rising into an ear-splitting screech. "Do you have any idea what they’ve done to us?! They took my jewelry! They took my shoes! They have your father in an observation cell on suicide watch because his heart medication hasn't cleared the pharmacy! And Sutton... my God, Fallon, your baby sister is in a solitary holding cell wearing a paper suicide smock because she had an anxiety attack during intake!"
"Sutton is twenty-eight years old, Althia," I replied, my voice completely flat, devoid of a single inflection. "She isn't a baby. She’s a convicted felon awaiting trial for aggravated mayhem."
"It was a joke!" Althia screamed, her fists audibly banging against the metal shelf of the inmate payphone. "How many times do we have to tell you it was a joke?! She was stressed! The wedding was costing eighty thousand dollars! She was trying to build her brand! You have always been so hard, Fallon! So cold, so unyielding, so jealous of your sister’s light!"
"My light?" A short, bitter laugh tore from my chest.
"I sat in a gurney with three bent titanium pins sticking through my tibial crest, Althia. I listened to you tell me that I was embarrassing you while my blood was pooling on the marble floor. Where was your maternal light then?"
"You provoked her!" Althia wept, shifting instantly into that ancient, practiced weapon of narcissistic DARVO. "You walked down those stairs looking like a construction worker! You knew Alden’s family was watching! You wanted to humiliate us! And now look what you’ve done—the Montgomerys have cancelled the merger! Stellin’s engineering firm is in involuntary receivership! The local papers have our pictures on the front page!"
"And what about Arthur Henderson’s trust, Althia?" I asked softly.
The line went completely, terrifyingly silent.
The background noise of the correctional facility seemed to drop away into a bottomless vacuum.
"What... what did you say?" Althia’s voice dropped into a faint, trembling croak.
"Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars," I said, each word falling like an iron ingot onto the floorboards. "Liquidated between 2018 and 2022. Forged probate modifications. Stolen aerospace equities to pay for Sutton’s apartment on Santana Row and her failed marketing agency."
"That was... that was family money—"
"That was my grandfather’s money, Althia," I cut in, my voice rising slightly, cutting through her stammering like a razor through rotten gauze. "He left it to me. And you stole it while I was sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor of a cargo hangar in Anchorage, working double shifts to pay off my own college loans."
Harrison Reed stepped toward the phone, leaning down until his lips were inches from the microphone.
"Mrs. Mercer," Harrison said, his cultured baritone carrying the weight of a federal indictment. "This is Harrison Reed of Reed & Sterling. At nine o'clock tomorrow morning, our firm will file an emergency motion with the San Francisco Superior Court to unseal the criminal referrals for testamentary grand larceny and statutory elder abuse against you and your husband. Every asset you currently own—including the primary residence in Los Gatos and your husband's remaining pension distributions—is subject to immediate judicial attachment to satisfy our seven-hundred-thousand-dollar civil restitution demand."
"No!" Althia shrieked, her voice cracking into absolute, unvarnished hysteria. "You can't take our house! Where will we live?! Where will Sutton go when she gets out?!"
"Sutton won't be getting out for four to seven years, Mrs. Mercer," Harrison replied with chilling precision. "And you have twenty-one days to vacate the Los Gatos property before the county sheriff padlocks the gates."
"Fallon!" Althia wailed, the receiver shaking in her hands as she began to sob with the desperate, ugly weeping of a predator that had finally been cornered in its own trap. "Fallon, please! I’m your mother! I carried you for nine months! You can't leave your own mother on the street! Tell your lawyers to stop! Tell them we’ll sign an agreement! We’ll pay you back... we’ll give you Sutton’s jewelry... please, Fallon! Have mercy!"
I looked down at the heavy plaster cast encasing my shattered leg.
I thought of thirty-four years of being told that I was too sensitive.
I thought of the prom dress Sutton had deliberately spilled red punch on when she was fourteen.
I thought of the three thousand dollars my father had stolen from my college savings account to buy Sutton a horse that she abandoned after six months.
I thought of the cold marble steps of the Cliffside Resort, and the sound of my sister laughing while my bone snapped inside my flesh.
"Mercy is for people who make mistakes, Althia," I whispered into the phone. "You didn't make a mistake. You made an industry out of breaking me."
I reached out with my left hand, pressed the red disconnect button on the console, and ended the call.
The silence that returned to the hospital room was absolute, pure, and clean.
I leaned my head back against the white pillows, closed my eyes, and let out a long, slow breath.
May you like
The cord had been cut.
And for the first time in my life, I was completely, beautifully alone.
