Chapter 15 - The Attempted Bribe
At 9:00 PM on a Tuesday evening, a soft, pathetic tapping came at our back kitchen door.
Daniel instantly placed himself between the door and the living room where Emma was watching a cartoon. He drew his sidearm, keeping it lowered behind his thigh, and nodded for me to stay back.
He unlocked the door and pulled it open.
Standing on our back patio, shivering under a cheap raincoat in the drizzling rain, was Diane.
She looked ten years older. Her hair was greasy, her face hollow, her eyes darting around like a hunted animal. In her trembling hands, she held a thick brown envelope.
"Sarah... Daniel... please," she whimpered, tears spilling down her wrinkled cheeks.
Daniel didn't raise his voice. "You have five seconds to step off this property before I physically restrain you for a felony violation."
"Just listen to me!" Diane sobbed, dropping to her knees on the wet deck. She thrust the envelope toward us. "There's forty thousand dollars in here. It’s all I have left from my personal savings. It's yours. Take it for Emma. Take it for college. Just tell the prosecutor it was an accident. Tell them Vanessa didn't mean it! Richard is going to prison, Sarah! They're taking the house! I have nowhere to go!"
I walked up behind Daniel, looking down at the woman who had given birth to me.
For twenty-nine years, this woman had made me feel small, unloved, and unworthy. When my daughter was lying on her patio with blood gushing from her nose, Diane had laughed.
"Do you remember what you said at the party, Mom?" I asked quietly.
Diane blinked, dazed. "What?"
"'Serves her right,'" I quoted, each syllable landing like a hammer. "'Serves her right for having a mouth.' You watched an eight-year-old child bleed and you laughed."
"I was out of my mind!" Diane wailed. "I'm your mother!"
"A real mother protects her child," I replied coldly. "You taught me how to be a mother by showing me everything a mother shouldn't be. Take your dirty money and get off our lawn."
Daniel pulled his phone out, dialed the deputy's direct line, and held it to his ear.
"Deputy Miller? Diane Vance is trespassing at my back door with an envelope of cash attempting to bribe a state witness. Send a car."
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Diane let out a bloodcurdling scream of pure frustration and despair, dropped the envelope into the mud, and ran blindly toward the street. The deputies picked her up two blocks away.
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