Chapter 7 - The Visit To Oxford
In early May, I drove the three hours north from Chicago to the federal correctional institution in Oxford, Wisconsin.
I hadn't seen Grant since the judge struck the gavel on his sentencing morning six months earlier.
I didn't go there out of vengeance, and I didn't go there to gloat.
I went there to close the final door on a fifteen-year chapter of my life.
The visitor room was cold, smelling of floor wax, industrial bleach, and stale institutional coffee.
I sat at a plain laminated table beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights, wearing a simple beige trench coat and no jewelry except my mother's antique gold watch.
The heavy security door clicked open, and a correctional officer escorted Grant into the room.
He wore a loose-fitting dark green prison uniform with his inmate registration number stamped across the left pocket.
His silver-streaked hair had been buzzed short, his posture was hunched, and the arrogant, commanding swagger that had once dominated corporate boardrooms was completely gone.
He sat down across from me, his hands resting flat on the table, shackled together by a six-inch steel chain.
"You came," Grant whispered, his voice cracked and dry.
"I brought the final divorce decree, Grant," I said, sliding a thin manila folder across the laminate.
"The judge signed the dissolution yesterday. Your legal team approved the division of remaining debts."
Grant looked down at the papers, but he didn't pick up the pen.
He looked up at me, his bloodshot eyes searching my face with an agonizing mix of regret and desperation.
"Laura... do you ever think about the beginning?" he asked quietly.
"When we were twenty-three? Working until dawn in that tiny loft, eating two-dollar pizza slices and dreaming about building towers together?"
"I think about those kids sometimes, Grant," I answered honestly.
"What happened to us?" he choked out, a tear tracking through the stubble on his cheek.
"You fell in love with the reflection of power, Grant," I said softly, without anger.
"You stopped caring about the building, and you only cared about whose name was on the plaque. And when you let Vanessa talk you into stealing from children, you became someone that twenty-three-year-old boy would have despised."
Grant buried his face in his shackled hands, his shoulders shaking with silent, bitter weeping.
"Does Noah ever ask about me?" he whispered into his palms.
"Noah knows where you are, Grant," I replied.
"He doesn't hate you. But he told me yesterday that he is spending his life learning how to be the opposite of the man who stood on that gala stage."
Grant slowly lifted his head, picked up the pen, and signed the final page of the divorce decree with a shaking hand.
I took the folder, closed it, and stood up from the table.
May you like
"Take care of yourself, Grant," I said quietly.
I turned and walked toward the heavy steel exit doors, stepping through the security checkpoint without looking back once.
