In the visiting room of the state women's correctional facility, the air was cold and smelled of floor wax and stale cabbage. Marta sat on one side of the scratched Plexiglas partition. She wore a faded, oversized gray sweater she had bought at a thrift store. Her hair was greasy, pulled back into a messy ponytail, and her face was thin, the hollows under her eyes dark and bruised from months of sleepless nights.
On the other side of the glass sat Laura. She was wearing a bright orange inmate jumpsuit. Her manicured nails were gone, replaced by cracked, dirty fingertips. Her hair was gray at the roots, and the elegant, smooth skin she had spent thousands of dollars maintaining was now dry, wrinkled, and pale under the harsh fluorescent lights.
"Did you find him?" Laura asked, her voice cracking through the small metal speaker in the partition. "Did you find Andre? Did he agree to help us?"
Marta looked at her mother through the glass, her expression filled with a cold, dead emptiness. "He won't talk to me," Marta said. "His lawyer told me that if I ever try to contact him again, they will file harassment charges. He's had his conviction vacated. He's a free man. The state is paying him three million dollars in compensation."
Laura's eyes lit up with a sudden, desperate greed. "Three million dollars? Marta, you have to go to him! You have to beg! Tell him you were confused! Tell him Bob forced you to make those photos! He loved you, Marta! He would never let you starve!"
"He isn't starving, Mom," Marta said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I went to Blackwood last week. I watched him from across the street. He was working at a shipyard. He looked happy. He looked younger than he did when we were living in the penthouse."
She leaned closer to the glass, her eyes fixed on Laura's face.
"He looked at me, Mom. He was walking out of a grocery store, and he looked right at me standing on the corner. I started to walk toward him. I was crying. I was going to call him Dad."
"And?" Laura gasped, pressing her hands against the glass. "What did he do?"
"Nothing," Marta said, a single cold tear escaping her eye and rolling down her cheek. "He didn't get angry. He didn't look surprised. He just looked past me like I was a pole or a trash can on the street. He got into a small, old pickup truck and drove away. To him, I don't exist."
Laura's face fell, her mouth hanging open. "But... but the debt! The bank is suing us for the remaining seventy million dollars! They took the apartment, they took my jewelry, they took everything! I have fifteen years in this place, Marta! What am I supposed to do?"