Chapter 14 - The Letter From Cell Block C
One rainy afternoon seven months later, a thin envelope arrived at the estate with a state correctional facility return address.
The letter was addressed to Maya Vance, written in messy, smudged pencil on lined prison paper.
I sat on the covered back patio, watching Chloe play with her wooden stacking blocks on a soft woolen rug.
Barbara stood by the marble balustrade, sipping an espresso while the cool autumn rain washed over the manicured rose gardens.
I broke the official seal and unfolded the worn sheet of paper.
"Maya," the letter began, the handwriting shaking with unmistakable desperation.
"They let me work in the prison laundry room now for twenty cents an hour."
"Most of that money is immediately sent to the court restitution account for you and Chloe."
"I don't have enough left over to buy extra soap or warm socks from the commissary."
"It's freezing here, Maya. The concrete walls never get warm, even in the summer."
"I wake up every single night hearing the sound of that incubator alarm from the hospital."
"I close my eyes and I see your face on that porch, begging me to help our sick baby."
"I don't know who I was when I said those terrible things to you."
"I was blind, poisoned by greed, and completely seduced by a shallow life that turned into ashes."
"Please, Maya, I’m begging you to ask my mother to withdraw the civil restitution claims."
"I will sign over any remaining rights to the family name."
"I just want to be able to see a picture of my daughter."
"Let me write her letters so she knows her father didn't completely hate her."
"I am rotting away in this cell, and nobody in this entire world visits me or says my name."
"You were always kind, Maya. Please have mercy on me."
I read the last sentence, feeling neither anger nor sorrow.
The words were just hollow scratchings from a man who had never possessed a soul of his own.
I passed the letter across the patio table to Barbara.
The matriarch adjusted her glasses, scanned the three pages in thirty seconds, and let out a soft, dismissive breath.
She didn't speak a single word.
She simply walked over to the stone fireplace on the patio, struck an antique brass match, and held the flame against the corner of the paper.
The yellow flame curled around Eric’s desperate begging, consuming the smudged pencil marks in a flash of heat.
Within seconds, the paper turned into gray, crumbling ash, which drifted away into the damp rain of the garden.
May you like
"A man who abandons his child in the dark does not deserve to walk in her light," Barbara said softly, turning back to me.
"Now, let us go inside. Chloe is ready for her afternoon story."
