Chapter 17 - Shadows in Danbury
While life in Scotland blossomed, the consequences of deception continued to run their inescapable course across the Atlantic.
At the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, Bianca Vance sat in a beige visiting room behind scratched Plexiglas. The designer blouses, the turquoise jewelry, and the salon-styled hair were ancient memories. She wore a drab prison uniform, her face pale and lined with exhaustion. Across the partition sat Arthur Vance, her disbarred cousin, looking equally broken in a threadbare trench coat.
"Did Charles send anything?" Bianca demanded, her voice hoarse and bitter. "He promised fifty thousand dollars for my commissary and legal appeal! He told me Julian would take care of me once the asset dust settled!"
Arthur shook his head slowly, a humorless sneer curling his lip. "Charles doesn't have fifty dollars, Bianca, let alone fifty thousand. The federal government seized the Florida condominium two weeks ago. Charles and Victoria are living in an assisted living annex paid for by state welfare. Victoria has dementia setting in; she spends her mornings wandering the corridors asking nurses where the butler put her silver tea service."
Bianca slammed her handcuffed fists onto the metal counter. "And Julian? What about Julian?"
"Julian is a ghost," Arthur replied. "He was evicted from his basement room last month. He’s living in a halfway shelter in South Boston, working the night shift cleaning grease traps at a fish processing plant near the harbor. The court garnishes eighty percent of his checks for Claire’s legal sanctions and back child support. He has nothing. We have nothing."
Bianca buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking violently as the reality of her choices crashed down upon her. She had thought she was playing an easy game. She had believed that an orphaned wife from Vermont was an easy mark, someone who would quietly surrender her husband, her pride, and her children's future without a fight. She had traded her freedom, her reputation, and her youth for a counterfeit promise of luxury, only to end up in a federal penitentiary while the woman she mocked lived like royalty across the sea.
"She knew," Bianca sobbed, her fingernails digging into her palms. "Claire knew the whole time. At that Christmas dinner, when I put my hand on my stomach and Victoria smiled... Claire just looked at me and drank her cider. She wasn't scared. She was just waiting for us to hang ourselves."
"That is what patience does, Bianca," Arthur said, standing up and buttoning his coat. "The Ashfords built Boston before the Whitmores even had a bank account. We tried to steal from the bedrock, and the bedrock crushed us."
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The guard tapped on the heavy steel door. "Visiting time is over, Vance. Step back."
Bianca stood up, her legs trembling, and walked back into the cold concrete corridor, the heavy iron gate locking behind her with an echoing, permanent thud.
