Chapter 10 - The Visitor Booth Reckoning
The holding facility at the Metropolitan Correctional Center smelled of industrial bleach and perpetual dampness.
The fluorescent tubes overhead hummed with a maddening, persistent buzz that drilled into my temples.
I hadn't slept in over forty-eight hours, and my reflection in the stainless steel toilet bowl was barely recognizable.
Dark purple bags hung beneath my hollow eyes, and a thick stubble covered my jaw.
At ten in the morning, a corrections officer tapped the bars of my cell with a heavy wooden baton.
"Bennett, legal visiting booth four, you’ve got ten minutes," he barked, unlocking the iron sliding door.
They cuffed my hands in front of me and led me through a maze of wire-reinforced glass corridors.
I expected to see Julian Croft, the premier white-collar defense attorney my firm had always used for regulatory matters.
I was prepared to hear Croft explain his aggressive bail strategy and his plan to challenge the admissibility of the flight records.
Instead, when I sat down at booth four, the heavy wooden chair on the other side of the glass was occupied by Dakota.
She sat alone beneath the dim institutional bulb, wearing an oversized grey wool coat and no jewelry.
Her wedding ring—the three-carat diamond I had purchased with company funds—was noticeably absent from her left finger.
She picked up the black plastic telephone receiver on her side of the partition.
With trembling, bruised fingers, I lifted the matching receiver to my ear.
"Where is Croft?" I asked, my voice dry and cracked like sandpaper.
"Croft resigned from your defense an hour ago, Miles," Dakota answered evenly through the speaker.
"The executive committee voted unanimously to deny corporate indemnification for your legal fees," she said.
"They deemed your conduct outside the scope of your employment duties, so you are entirely on your own," she added.
"You are going to have to rely on a court-appointed public defender for your arraignment this afternoon," she told me.
A wave of icy despair washed over me as the reality of my abandonment settled in.
"Did you come here just to gloat, Dakota?" I asked, closing my eyes against the harsh glare of the glass.
"Did you come to watch me sit in prison scrubs while you celebrate with your father?" I muttered.
Dakota sighed softly, resting her palm flat against the scratched acrylic barrier separating us.
"I didn't come to gloat, Miles," she said, her voice completely calm and measured.
"I came to bring you this," she said, pulling a portable digital audio recorder from her coat pocket.
She pressed the small device against the glass speaker grill and hit the playback button.
A familiar, raspy voice filled the telephone receiver, weak but undeniably clear.
It was my mother.
"Miles, my boy," Eleanor’s voice whispered through the static.
My entire body stiffened, and my hand squeezed the plastic receiver so tightly that my knuckles turned white.
"Dakota brought me to her home in Greenwich yesterday," Eleanor continued, her words punctuated by gentle breaths.
"The garden here is beautiful, Miles, full of the white hydrangeas we used to grow in Ohio when you were a little boy," she said.
"I remember how hard you worked in high school, studying at the kitchen table until two in the morning," she remembered.
"You were so determined to make something of yourself, to prove that our family mattered," she said softly.
Tears welled up in my eyes, burning hot against my exhausted eyelids.
"When did you decide that having things was more important than having honor, Miles?" my mother asked.
"When did you decide that your mother's dignity was something you could trade away for luxury?" she wept softly into the microphone.
"I don't hate you, my son, because a mother cannot stop loving the boy she raised," Eleanor said.
"But I will not protect you from the truth anymore," she said firmly.
"I signed the affidavit for Dakota and the government this morning, releasing my medical records and power of attorney," she stated.
"Pay your debt to the world, Miles, and find your soul again before it is too late," Eleanor concluded.
The recording clicked off, leaving only the dull hum of the intercom line between Dakota and me.
Tears were streaming freely down my unshaven cheeks, dripping off my chin onto the orange fabric of my jumpsuit.
For the first time since this nightmare began, the defensive armor around my ego completely shattered.
I dropped my forehead against the cold, scratched partition, sobbing uncontrollably into the plastic receiver.
"I'm sorry, Dakota," I wept, the words coming out in broken, ragged gasps.
"I am so sorry for what I did to you, to my mother, to everyone," I cried.
Dakota watched me through the glass, her expression softening with profound sadness, but her posture never wavered.
"I know you are sorry now, Miles," Dakota whispered through the phone.
"You are sorry because the plane landed in Halifax instead of Florence," she said.
"You are sorry because the accounts are empty and the cameras are waiting outside," she added.
"True remorse takes years of quiet rebuilding, not ten minutes of tears in a federal holding booth," she said.
She stood up slowly, smoothing the front of her coat, and placed the telephone receiver back onto its metal cradle.
She pressed her hand against the glass for two seconds, looking at me with finality.
May you like
"Goodbye, Miles," she mouthed silently through the glass.
She turned and walked out through the heavy steel door, closing the chapter of our marriage forever.
