Chapter 17 - The Broken Pedestal
The visiting booth at the Northern Neck Regional Correctional Center smelled of industrial pine disinfectant and rancid sweat.
Vivian Ross sat on the chipped plastic stool, her trembling hands pressed hard against the reinforced Plexiglas partition.
Her dyed auburn hair had begun to show an inch of brittle gray at the roots, and her tailored woolen coat was missing two bone buttons.
On the other side of the glass, Derek shuffled forward, the heavy iron chains at his ankles clinking against the concrete floor.
His immaculate charcoal suit had been replaced by a coarse, faded orange jumpsuit stamped with county department numbers.
His face was pale, his eyes sunken and bloodshot, his hands covered in nervous scratches.
"Derek! Oh, my precious boy!" Vivian sobbed, slamming her open palm against the partition.
"Look what they have done to you! It is monstrous! It is completely barbaric!"
Derek did not smile; he did not lean forward to meet her gaze.
He sat down heavily on the metal bench, picked up the scratched black telephone receiver, and stared at her with hollow fury.
Vivian snatched her receiver off the wall with desperate, shaking fingers.
"Derek, listen to me, I spoke with the parish rector and two of your father's former lodge brothers," Vivian whispered frantically.
"They are going to write letters of moral character to the presiding magistrate!"
"We are going to tell the court that Katherine orchestrates this entire nightmare out of deep-seated childhood jealousy!"
"Everyone knows she was always sullen, ungrateful, and bitter because you were blessed with natural charisma!"
Derek closed his eyes, his breathing shallow and ragged over the crackling audio line.
"Shut up, Mom," Derek whispered, his voice shaking with a cold, venomous despair.
Vivian froze, her mouth hanging open in complete, stunned disbelief.
"What did you say?" Vivian gasped. "Derek, I am your mother! I gave up everything to build your future!"
"You didn't build anything, Mom," Derek snarled, leaning his face within inches of the scarred Plexiglas.
"You built a cardboard house out of lies, and now the entire roof has collapsed on my head!"
"You told me I was a king! You told me Katherine was a nobody who existed only to serve our family!"
"You told me she was a clerk who pushed papers in Norfolk and that nobody would ever check the invoices!"
Tears of rage spilled over Derek's hollow cheeks, dripping down onto his institutional collar.
"Do you know who interrogated me yesterday, Mom?" Derek hissed into the receiver.
"Three federal prosecutors and two commanders from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service!"
"They put a photograph of Katherine on the table in her full dress blues with three silver stars on each shoulder!"
"The lead prosecutor laughed in my face when I claimed I had naval clearance!"
"He told me my sister commands more firepower than twenty sovereign nations combined!"
"He told me that while you were pinning my third-place ribbons on the refrigerator, Katherine was surviving the Persian Gulf and commanding destroyers!"
"And now I am going to spend ten years in a federal penitentiary because I believed your pathetic fairy tale!"
Vivian shrank back against the plastic stool as if she had been struck with a hammer.
"Derek, please... I did it out of love! I protected you from her coldness!"
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"You didn't protect me, you crippled me!" Derek screamed, slamming the heavy receiver against the shelf until a corrections guard stepped forward with a drawn baton.
Derek dropped the receiver, turned his back on his mother, and walked into the darkness of the cellblock without looking back once.
