My name is Nora Bennett, and I was twenty-two years old when I buried both my parents on the same morning.

(1,500 words)

Six months later.

A cold, grey rain fell over the maximum-security perimeter of the Hazleton Federal Correctional Institution.

I sat in a private, glass-partitioned visitation room inside the facility's high-security wing. I wore an elegant cream-colored coat, sipping tea from a paper cup, waiting patiently.

I hadn't come here to seek revenge. I hadn't come to gloat.

I had come because Celeste’s legal team had sent six formal petitions over the past year begging for a thirty-minute meeting regarding an application for medical sentence reduction due to her failing health.

The heavy steel door on the opposite side of the glass opened with a sharp BUZZ.

A correction officer led Celeste into the room.

She was wearing a faded yellow jumpsuit, her hands cuffed to a heavy leather waist restraint. Her hair was completely white now, thin and unkempt. Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken, her hands trembling violently as she sat down on the stool behind the thick glass partition.

She looked at me through the reinforced glass—a woman completely stripped of her luxury, her vanity, and her pride.

I picked up the plastic telephone receiver on my side of the glass.

Celeste picked up her receiver with trembling, cuffed hands.

"Nora..." Celeste rasped, her voice thin, scratchy, and pathetic. "You... you actually came."

"I came because your lawyer said you had something to tell me, Celeste," I said calmly, my voice flat and emotionless.

Celeste pressed her forehead against the glass, tears leaking from her hollow eyes. "I'm sick, Nora... the prison doctors say my liver is failing... I won't survive another two years in here..."

"That is between you and the Bureau of Prisons, Celeste," I replied.

"Please, Nora!" Celeste sobbed, her voice rising in frantic desperation. "Sign the victim mercy petition! If you sign it, the judge will allow me to transfer to a medical hospice facility! I don't want to die in a steel cell!"

I looked at her through the glass—the woman who had scattered my mother's ashes in the mud, who had hired men to murder my father, who had laughed while her son recorded my agony.

I felt no rage. I felt no hatred. I felt only a vast, empty clarity.

"Do you remember what you told me on the driveway two years ago, Celeste?" I asked quietly into the phone.

Celeste blinked through her tears, trembling. "Nora... I was foolish... I was greedy..."

"'This house belongs to the surviving family,'" I quoted her exact words softly. "'You were his obligation. Not his future.'"

Celeste choked on a sob, looking down at her cuffed wrists.

"You spent your life believing that money and power gave you the right to destroy people," I continued, holding her gaze firmly. "You thought throwing me into the rain made you strong. But all it did was reveal who you truly were."

"Nora... please... have mercy..." Celeste begged, pressing her hand against the glass.

"Mercy is for people who feel remorse, Celeste," I said gently. "You aren't sorry you killed my father. You're just sorry you got caught."

I slowly set the telephone receiver back onto its hook on the wall.

Celeste screamed into her receiver, pounding her cuffed hands against the glass, her frantic cries completely muffled by the soundproof partition.

I stood up from my chair, adjusted my cream-colored coat, and walked toward the exit door without looking back once.

The correction officer buzzed the steel door open.

I stepped out of the prison facility into the crisp, cool autumn air. The rain had stopped, and a beam of brilliant golden sunlight was breaking through the grey clouds above the valley.