Chapter 6 - THE PRISON VISITATION ROOM: WHY ELEANOR'S PRIDE FINALLY CRACKED BEHIND BARS
The fluorescent lights of the Travis County Detention Center buzzed with an irritating, high-pitched hum that seemed to vibrate directly through the gray cinderblock walls of the visitor processing center.
Eleanor Sterling sat at a bolted stainless-steel table, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, staring down at her bare, unadorned ring fingers.
Gone were the multi-carat diamond tennis bracelets, the designer silk blouses, and the haughty, untouchable posture that had defined her decades as the reigning matriarch of high society.
In their place was a coarse, pale-orange jumpsuit, unwashed hair pulled back into a messy, pathetic elastic band, and the hollow, haunted eyes of a woman who had realized too late that her arrogance had destroyed her entire world.
The heavy metal door at the far end of the visitation corridor clicked open.
A corrections officer escorted a visitor into the booth—a woman wearing a sharp charcoal-gray trench coat, black sunglasses, and holding a sleek leather briefcase.
Eleanor looked up, squinting through the smudged Plexiglas partition.
When I slid off my sunglasses and locked eyes with her across the stainless-steel divide, Eleanor flinched as though she had been physically struck by lightning.
She scrambled forward in her plastic chair, grabbed the heavy black telephone receiver attached to the wall, and raised it to her ear with trembling, ink-stained fingers.
I picked up my receiver on the other side, maintaining a calm, unreadable distance.
“Maya...” Eleanor choked out, her voice cracking with a ragged, pathetic desperation. “Maya, please... you have to help us. You have the power to drop the civil litigation, to talk to the district attorney, to tell them it was all a terrible misunderstanding.”
I sat back in my chair, crossing one leg over the other, resting my hand comfortably on the armrest.
“A misunderstanding, Eleanor?” I asked quietly, my voice carrying clearly through the intercom speaker. “You grabbed me by the hair, dragged me across the parquet floor, and helped Marcus engineer an eighty-thousand-dollar wire fraud scheme to frame me for theft. There was nothing misunderstood about your intentions.”
Tears spilled over Eleanor’s eyelashes, cutting clean paths down her sallow cheeks. “Marcus is my son! He’s facing twelve years in a federal penitentiary! They’re putting him in maximum security with violent offenders! He doesn't survive in a place like this, Maya! Please... show some mercy. Show some family loyalty!”
“Family loyalty?” I let out a dry, humorless laugh that echoed softly in the secure booth. “Where was your family loyalty when you watched me get lynched in your dining room? Where was your family loyalty when you plotted to strip away every cent I owned and throw me out onto the street with nothing?”
Eleanor slammed her palm against the Plexiglas partition. “We were protecting the Sterling name! You were an outsider! You didn't come from money! You didn't belong with us!”
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“And look where belonging with you got you,” I said, standing up smoothly from my chair, slipping my sunglasses back onto the bridge of my nose. “Enjoy your stay, Eleanor. The accommodations are exactly what you earned.”
I hung up the phone, turned on my heel, and walked out of the visitation room, leaving the former matriarch of high society weeping hysterically into a dead plastic handset.
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