Chapter 10 - The Mirror
Three years later.
In the maximum-security federal correctional institution in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, the thick steel doors of the cell block clanged shut with a loud, deafening thud that echoed down the long concrete corridor.
Inside a six-by-eight-foot concrete cell, inmate number 88492—Richard Hale—sat on the edge of a narrow steel cot.
He wore a faded gray prison uniform with his registration number stamped across the left breast. His hair was completely white, thin, and unkempt. His jaw was visibly asymmetrical where the bone had healed incorrectly after his tooth was knocked out three years ago.
He pulled a small, cracked plastic mirror from his pocket and looked at his reflection under the harsh fluorescent light of the cell.
His missing front tooth had been replaced by a cheap, yellowish plastic denture that didn't fit properly, forcing him to speak with a pronounced, humiliating lisp. His skin was pale, saggy, and covered in age spots.
A guard knocked loudly on the iron bars of his cell door.
"Hale!" the guard barked. "You've got a visitor."
Richard’s bloodshot eyes flickered with a faint, desperate spark of hope. "Who is it? Is it my appellate lawyer? Did the Governor sign the sentence reduction?"
"No," the guard sneered, unlocking the heavy iron door. "It's your former co-defendant. She has ten minutes."
Richard scrambled off his cot, adjusting his yellowing denture with his thumb, his heart pounding in his chest as he was led down the cold concrete hallway to the non-contact visitation room.
He sat down on the wooden stool behind a thick pane of bulletproof glass, picking up the heavy black plastic telephone receiver with shaking hands.
On the other side of the glass sat Vanessa.
She looked forty years older. She wore a cheap gray trench coat, no jewelry, no makeup, her skin dry and weathered from years of working forty hours a week as a logistics clerk in New Jersey. Her hands were rough, her fingernails unpolished and short.
Richard held the phone to his ear, his slurred voice echoing through the static wire. "Vanessa... Vanessa, did you bring money for my commissary account? I need coffee... I need clean soap..."
Vanessa looked at him through the thick glass—at the man she had sacrificed her marriage, her career, and her dignity for three years ago.
She didn't pick up her phone immediately. She just stared at his broken face, his missing tooth, his faded prison uniform, seeing the absolute, pathetic reality of the man she had once called a "winner."
Slowly, Vanessa picked up the black receiver, holding it to her ear.
"I didn't bring any money, Richard," Vanessa said, her voice flat, tired, and completely dead.
"Then why the hell did you come here?" Richard yelled through the glass, his face turning an ugly, familiar shade of red. "You owe me! I went to prison because of your signed approvals! If you hadn't signed those documents—"
"I came here to see what you looked like," Vanessa interrupted softly, cutting him off mid-sentence.
Richard froze, his slurred mouth hanging open in confusion. "What?"
"I came here to look at you," Vanessa repeated, her eyes cold and empty as she stared through the glass. "Because every night when I lie awake in my tiny, cold apartment in Jersey City, listening to the trains go by, I ask myself why I threw away a man who loved me... for a creature like you."
Richard slammed his fist against the bulletproof glass, his slurred voice high and hysterical. "I was a billionaire! I built an empire! David Hayes was nothing! He was just a coward who hid behind his grandfather's money!"
Vanessa let out a quiet, hollow laugh that turned into a quiet sob.
"David built an empire that saved four thousand people's jobs, Richard," Vanessa whispered into the phone. "Last week, I saw him on the news. He was standing beside his new wife in Chicago, opening a fifty-million-dollar children's hospital. He looked happy. He looked noble. He looked like a real man."
She looked at Richard one last time—at his bulging, bloodshot eyes, his fake plastic tooth, his violent, pathetic rage behind the glass.
"And you," Vanessa added, her voice dropping into a chilling whisper. "You're just a broken tooth in a glass of water."
She hung up the black telephone receiver, setting it gently back on its hook.
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"Vanessa! Come back here, you bitch!" Richard screamed through the glass, pounding his fists wildly against the partition until two heavy prison guards grabbed his arms and dragged him backward onto the concrete floor. "Vanessa!"
Vanessa stood up, turned her back on the glass, and walked out into the cold rain outside the prison gates, leaving the noise of his desperate screams behind her forever.
