Chapter 10 - Eleanor’s Last Stand
The bail hearing took place forty-eight hours later. Because of Vanessa’s outburst during her arrest and the disturbing psychological history detailed in the unsealed juvenile records, the judge set bail at five hundred thousand dollars and ordered a mandatory sixty-day psychiatric evaluation before trial.
Eleanor was waiting for me in the courthouse corridor after the hearing adjourned.
She looked entirely diminished. Her hair, usually coiffed to perfection, was pulled back in a haphazard knot. The designer suit she wore was wrinkled, and the dark circles under her eyes revealed she hadn't slept in days. When she saw Arthur standing beside me, she stopped dead in her tracks, her expression shifting between fury and disbelief.
“Arthur,” she hissed. “You coward. You dared to come back here?”
Arthur stepped forward, positioning himself squarely in front of me. “I came back to do what I should have done twenty-two years ago, Eleanor. To protect our daughter from you.”
Eleanor let out a sharp, hysterical laugh. “Protect her? You’ve destroyed us! Both of you! Do you know what they are saying in the papers? The society clubs have revoked my membership! Richard’s family is suing us for wedding costs and fraud! Vanessa is sitting in a county cell with common criminals, and you two are standing here pretending to be righteous!”
She pushed past Arthur, her eyes locking onto mine, desperate and feral. She grabbed my arm with bony, claw-like fingers.
“Emily, you have to drop this,” she pleaded, her voice cracking. “You have to tell the prosecutor you exaggerated! Tell them the microphone slipped! Tell them you remembered the basement wrong! If Vanessa goes to state prison, her life is over! Do you want that on your conscience? Do you want to be the one who destroyed your own sister?”
I looked down at her hand on my coat, then back up into her pleading, manipulative eyes.
“My life was almost over when I was four, Mom,” I said, my voice steady, clear, and quiet. “You stood over my broken body in that basement, and your only concern was the noise. You let me live with my attempted murderer for fifteen years. You forced me to apologize to her every time she hurt me. You stole my father, you stole my safety, and you stole my childhood.”
“I did it for the family!” Eleanor screamed, tears finally breaking through her makeup. “I did it to keep us together!”
“No,” I replied, peeling her fingers off my coat one by one. “You did it for yourself. You did it because you were too proud to admit that your golden daughter was broken. You didn't protect Vanessa because you loved her; you protected her because she was your creation, and your vanity couldn't survive the truth.”
A court officer stepped between us, warning Eleanor to keep her distance.
“I am not dropping the charges, Eleanor,” I said as Arthur wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “And when the state files their indictment against you for covering it up, I will be the prosecution’s star witness.”
May you like
She stood there, frozen and utterly alone in the wide marble hallway, as Arthur and I turned our backs on her and walked toward the light of the courthouse exit.
***
