Chapter 10 - DAVID’S FIRST VISITDavid looked older behind glass.
Not humbled.
Not yet.
Humiliation and humility were different countries, and David had only been dragged into the first.
Maya sat across from him at the federal detention center because Richard Sloane said it might help the civil case if she allowed one recorded conversation.
She agreed for one reason.
There was something she needed to hear him say.
The phone receiver felt cold in her hand.
David picked up his.
For a moment, neither spoke.
His eyes moved over her face, searching for the wife he understood how to manipulate.
He did not find her.
“Maya,” he said.
She waited.
“I am so sorry.”
The words came quickly.
Too quickly.
Like something rehearsed.
Maya looked at him through the scratched glass.
“For what?”
David swallowed. “For everything.”
“No.”
His brow tightened.
“Name it.”
He closed his eyes.
“Maya, please.”
“Name it.”
David looked away.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“For whom?”
His mouth trembled.
“For Lily.”
Maya’s fingers tightened around the receiver.
It was the first time she had heard him say their daughter’s name since learning she was dead.
“I loved her,” David whispered.
Maya said nothing.
“I did. Whatever you think of me, I loved my daughter.”
“Then why was her medical trust in Julianne’s apartment?”
David froze.
There.
Not grief.
Fear.
Maya saw it before he could hide it.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Maya, listen to me. A lot of documents are being twisted right now.”
“The Lily Trigger.”
David’s face drained.
She leaned closer.
“That’s what you called it.”
His eyes flicked toward the camera in the corner.
“Maya—”
“You signed the clause. You knew abandonment during a medical emergency could cost you control.”
“I didn’t think—”
“That Lily would die?”
His face crumpled.
“No.”
“That I would prove it?”
He looked at her then.
Really looked.
And Maya saw the answer.
David had never imagined she would become dangerous.
Not Maya.
Not his anxious wife.
Not the woman who double-checked school lunches and cried at insurance commercials and waited up for him long after she knew where he was.
He had mistaken love for weakness.
“I didn’t know she was dying,” he said.
“But you knew she was in the ICU.”
He said nothing.
Maya’s chest tightened.
There it was.
The thing she had come for.
Not confession.
Confirmation.
“You knew,” she whispered.
David pressed his palm to the glass.
“I knew she was sick.”
Maya stared at him.
“The hospital called,” he said, voice breaking. “I saw the number. I thought if I answered, you’d pull me back into another crisis. Julianne kept saying you were using Lily. I was drunk. I was angry. I thought—”
“You thought your freedom mattered more than your child.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I thought I could call the next day.”
Maya closed her eyes.
The next day Lily was unconscious.
David was crying now.
“I swear to God, Maya, I thought there would be time.”
Maya opened her eyes.
That sentence nearly broke her.
Because beneath all the fraud, cruelty, strategy, arrogance, and betrayal, there was the ordinary sin that destroys most lives.
People think there will be time.
Time to apologize.
Time to show up.
Time to become decent later.
David had gambled with time.
Lily paid.
Maya lifted Lily’s folded drawing from her pocket.
David stared.
“What is that?”
“She drew this in the hospital.”
His hand shook against the glass.
“Can I see it?”
“No.”
“Maya.”
“She asked for you.”
David sobbed once.
Maya’s voice stayed steady only because she had practiced it in her mind a hundred times.
“She asked if Daddy was busy. I told her yes.”
David covered his mouth.
“I told her you loved her.”
He bent forward, shoulders shaking.
“I made sure she died believing the best of you.”
David could not speak.
Maya looked at him for a long time.
“That was the last gift I will ever give you.”
She hung up the phone.
David slammed his hand against the glass, shouting something she could no longer hear.
Maya stood.
A guard opened the door.
As she walked out, Richard Sloane joined her in the hallway.
“Did you get what you needed?”
Maya looked down at Lily’s drawing.
“Yes.”
May you like
Behind her, David continued pounding on the glass.
For once, Maya did not turn back.
