Chapter 8 - A Sister's True Face
One week before the preliminary criminal trial commenced, I requested a supervised visit at the Franklin County Corrections Facility.
I didn't go to see Graham. I had nothing left to say to the man whose ring I had worn for fourteen years.
I went to see my sister.
Inside the visitation room, a thick pane of bulletproof glass separated the booths. Paige was led in by a female guard. She wore an orange county jumpsuit, her hair unwashed and tied back carelessly, her face gaunt, dark purple circles carved beneath her hollow eyes.
When she sat down and picked up the black telephone receiver, her hand was trembling violently.
"Hannah..." Paige wept into the phone, her voice crackling through the small speaker. "Thank God you came... Hannah, please... you have to tell the prosecutor to drop the conspiracy charges... I was manipulated by Graham! He used me!"
I picked up my receiver. I looked at her through the glass with an expression of complete, unshakeable calm.
"You weren't manipulated, Paige," I said, my voice quiet and steady. "I read all four thousand text messages. I saw the wire transfers you initiated from your laptop while sitting in my living room drinking my wine."
Paige's fake weeping stopped instantly. Her posture shifted, her shoulders hardening as the mask she had worn her entire life finally slipped away completely.
"You always had everything, Hannah," Paige spat into the receiver, her voice dropping into a bitter, venomous tone I had never heard before. "Grandma left you the trust fund. Dad gave you the down payment for your first apartment. You got the perfect degree, the nice house, the happy little family... and what did I get? A failed marriage and a business that went under!"
I stared at her, stunned by the sheer depth of her ancient, unboiled envy.
"I worked eighty hours a week at the historical trust to earn my career, Paige," I reminded her softly. "I cared for Aunt Eleanor during her final three years of cancer while you refused to visit her nursing home. That inheritance wasn't a gift—it was a trust built on love."
"It should have been split!" Paige shrieked against the glass, her eyes wide with unhinged rage. "I deserved half of that money! Graham saw how unfair it was! He loved me because I had ambition! You were just a boring, timid wife who thought baking cookies was a life!"
I looked at the woman sitting behind the glass—my own flesh and blood—and realized that the sister I thought I knew had never existed. She was merely a creature of entitlement and spite who had allowed her jealousy to turn her into a monster.
May you like
"You called me timid, Paige," I said quietly, setting my hand flat against the glass divider. "But it was my 'timid' daughter who saved my life. And it is my 'boring' strength that is going to keep you behind those steel bars for the next twenty years."
I hung up the phone, set the receiver back on its hook, stood up, and walked out of the visitation room without looking back once.
