I Signed Away Eight Million To Leave Him Chapter 45
A week passed, and the appeal decision had not yet come down.
Then the prison mailed a visitation request.
It didn’t come through my father’s inmate mail. It was a formal document with a case number printed across the top.
The reason for the requested visit read:
To discuss family truth.
I looked at those words and laughed.
My father had always believed truth was something he held in his hand.
If I refused to hear him, he could claim I was afraid.
If I did come, he would take my presence as forgiveness.
Eli set dinner on the table without asking if I planned to go.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“That’s your father,” he said, sitting across from me. “And your wound.”
“Whether you go or not, you don’t owe anyone an explanation.”
In the end, I checked the box agreeing to the visit.
Not because my father still had some hidden truth to reveal.
But because I refused to let the form make the choice for me.
There was a pane of thick glass between us in the visitation room.
My father wore prison clothes now, his hair whiter than it had been at trial.
He picked up the phone, and the first thing he said was, “I knew you’d come.”
“You still can’t let me go.”
“You have ten minutes,” I said.
His smile faltered.
“My lawyer says the appeal looks good. If you admit you didn’t see clearly back then, they’ll order a new trial.”
“I already refused to sign that statement.”
“You were a child!”
His voice rose sharply.
A guard looked over.
My father forced himself to lower his voice and leaned closer to the glass.
“Your mother hit me, too. She was trying to take you away, and she stole money from the house. When a husband and wife fight, who can say whose fault it is?”
“That was the bus money she saved.”
“I was her husband. Her money was my money!”
The words hung in the air.
Decades had passed, and he still believed my mother’s body, her money, and her right to leave all belonged to him.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he had done.
He had simply never believed he should have to pay for it.
“Sloane paid you a lot,” he said, changing his approach. “Use it to get me a better lawyer. Once I’m out, I won’t bother you and Eli.”
I looked at him.
“After she died, you took the last money she had. Now you want the money meant to help victims to set yourself free.”
“I’m your father!”
“You only remember that when you need money and freedom.”
He slammed a hand against the glass.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even exist!”
The guard came over at once.
I didn’t move.
When I was little, that hand came down on me, and I had nowhere to go but the corner.
Now it was trapped on the other side of the glass.
“I came because I wanted to confirm one thing with my own eyes,” I said before setting down the phone. “You haven’t changed.”
“So I’m done waiting for you to.”
He was still shouting my name when I stood and walked out.
I never looked back.
It was the last time I ever saw him.