Chapter 8 - The Prison Letter
In December, two weeks before Christmas, a heavy white envelope bearing a prison stamp arrived at my personal desk.
It was from the Clallam Federal Correctional Facility in California.
I sat in my quiet office, holding a brass letter opener, staring at my mother’s handwriting on the front.
I opened it.
Cara,
I am writing this from the visitation room. Your father and I have been stripped of our remaining personal trust allowances. The lawyers have abandoned us. Seth refuses to speak to us from his facility in Nevada, blaming us for his conviction.
The women here treat me terribly. I have to scrub floors, Cara. I have to eat terrible food. My health is failing.
You have billions now. You have the empire. Please, tell your grandfather to send money for a private defense appeal. Tell him to forgive us. We are your parents. You cannot leave us to die in this terrible place.
Your mother,
Evelyn
I read the letter twice.
I felt no surging anger. I felt no petty satisfaction.
I looked at the words 'We are your parents'—the same phrase she had used while holding my father back as I fell into the lake.
I picked up my pen, wrote a single sentence on a fresh piece of official executive stationery, and folded it into a return envelope:
“You didn't leave me to die in that lake because you were my parents. You left me because you were my parasites. The bill is paid in full.”
May you like
I sealed the envelope, dropped it into the outgoing mail tray, and turned back to my computer screen to finalize the annual employee bonus distribution for four thousand resort workers.
The past was officially buried in the dark where it belonged.
