Chapter 6 - The Glass Between Us
The visitor intake room at the Douglas County Correctional Facility smelled of floor bleach, stale coffee, and industrial disinfectant.
Arthur Vance sat on a hard plastic chair on his side of the thick, scratched plexiglass divider. His broad shoulders were hunched forward, his massive hands clasped tightly between his knees to control the steady, violent trembling of his fingers.
On the other side of the glass, the heavy metal door clicked open.
A female corrections officer led a thin, fragile young woman into the room. She wore an oversized orange jumpsuit that hung loosely off her skeletal frame. Her dark hair was matted, her skin pale and covered in faint sores, and dark purple circles bruised the skin beneath her hollow eyes.
Chloe Vance looked thirty-five, though she was barely twenty-three.
She pulled the chair back with a harsh metallic scrape and sat down, refusing to look at Arthur. She picked up the plastic telephone receiver without enthusiasm.
Arthur slowly picked up his phone. He brought it to his ear, his hand shaking so violently that the plastic receiver rattled against his jaw.
"Chloe," he said.
The sound of her name seemed to strike her like a physical shock. Her shoulders twitched, but she kept her gaze fixed firmly on the polished metal table between them.
"I don't know you," she said into her phone, her voice raspy, dry, and bitter. "The lawyer said you were my father. My father died in Iraq when I was five. My mom told me so."
"Your mother was angry, Chloe," Arthur said softly, his dark eyes brimming with unshed tears as he stared at his daughter's gaunt face. "She was hurt, and she was scared. I didn't die. I was wounded. I was in a military hospital in Germany for six months... when I came home, you were gone. She had packed up your room and vanished."
Chloe let out a cold, sharp laugh that ended in a dry cough. "Right. Great story. So where were you when I was sleeping in a car at fifteen? Where were you when the state put me in four different group homes where people stole my clothes and beat me up in the dark?"
"I was looking for you," Arthur said, his voice breaking. He pressed his broad, scarred hand against the glass divider, right beside her shoulder. "I spent every dollar I had hiring people to find you, Chloe. I searched every database in three states. But your mother changed your legal surname to her maiden name in 2008. The system hid you from me."
Chloe finally turned her head and looked at him.
She saw the massive burn scars twisting along his forearms. She saw the trembling in his hands. She saw the haunted, broken expression in his eyes—an expression that looked terrifyingly similar to the one she saw in her own reflection every morning in her cell mirror.
"Why are you here now?" she demanded, her voice cracking with anger. "You want to play daddy after twenty years? It's too late. I'm trash. I'm a junkie. I'm facing three years in state prison."
"I am not here for me, Chloe," Arthur said firmly, his eyes locking onto hers with absolute, unwavering intensity. "I am here for your daughter."
Chloe flinched, pulling her head back as if he had slapped her. "She... she isn't my daughter. I can't be a mother. Look at me! I almost killed her before she was even born! She's better off in the system!"
"No one is better off in the system!" Arthur roared softly into the receiver, his baritone vibrating through the glass. "I saw her today, Chloe. I held her. She is two pounds. She is fighting for every breath of air in an incubator at St. Jude’s. She has dark hair just like yours used to be when you were three years old."
Chloe covered her eyes with her thin, bruised hand, her shoulders beginning to heave with suppressed, agonizing sobs.
"They're going to take her away tomorrow at noon," Arthur continued, leaning as close to the glass as the seat would allow. "They're going to put her in a county ward. But I can stop them. I have a home. I have the resources. I have the time. But I need you to sign the kinship authorization, Chloe. I need you to let me be her grandfather."
"I... I can't..." she sobbed into the phone. "I'm so dirty, Dad... I'm so broken..."
Dad.
The word hung in the sterile visitor room like a golden thread dropped into a dark pit.
Arthur’s hand trembled harder against the glass. "You are broken, Chloe. And so am I. I've been broken since the day I stepped off that helicopter in Helmand. But we don't abandon our wounded. We bring them home."
He pressed the yellow birth certificate against the glass.
"Let me bring her home," Arthur pleaded quietly. "And when you finish your time here, when you get clean and heal... I will be waiting there to bring you home, too."
May you like
Chloe looked at the paper, then at the scarred, giant of a man weeping silently on the other side of the plexiglass.
She slowly reached down, picked up the pen the corrections officer had set on the metal table, and pulled the legal authorization form toward her.
