Chapter 16 - Tyler’s Turning Point
Inside the state correctional facility eighty miles north of the city, Tyler Vance sat on a stainless-steel stool, dressed in standard-issue hunter-green canvas.
Across the partition sat his father.
Dad had been released on conditional probation forty-eight hours prior, following his plea deal for the garage trespass. He looked ten years older. His clothes hung loosely on his shrinking frame, his knuckles were bruised from manual labor at a salvage yard—the only job that would hire a fifty-five-year-old on probation—and his eyes had lost every trace of their former swagger.
“You have to stay strong in here, son,” Dad muttered through the perforated steel screen. “The lawyers screwed us. Nora bought off the judges. But when you get out, we’ll figure out a way to get back what she stole from us.”
Tyler looked at his father.
Really looked at him.
He saw the pathetic, broken old man who had spent twenty years blaming the government, the neighbors, the banks, and his daughter for his own chronic laziness and stupidity. Tyler remembered Dad standing on the porch, laughing while egging him on to swing the tire iron.
*“Now you’ll learn,”* Dad had said.
Well, Tyler had learned.
He had learned that his father’s promises were counterfeit. He had learned that his mother’s coddling was a poison that had left him completely helpless in the real world. And he had learned that the sister he had mocked as a “glorified secretary” possessed more strength, intelligence, and ruthless competence than the rest of the family combined.
“Shut up, Dad,” Tyler said, his voice flat and dead.
Dad blinked, stunned. “What did you say to me?”
“I said shut up,” Tyler repeated, leaning closer to the screen. “Nora didn't steal anything from us. You owed three hundred grand on a house you didn't work for. You told me to smash her car. You told me she’d back down like she always did.”
“Tyler, I was trying to get you that car!”
“I didn't need that car!” Tyler shouted, his voice cracking with bitter tears. “I had a job offer at Apex Freight that paid sixty-five thousand a year! Nora set it up for me! She built me an entire life, and you told me to destroy her car instead!”
Dad’s jaw dropped. “She… she never told us that.”
“Because she wanted to see if I was a man or a monster,” Tyler whispered, wiping his nose on his green sleeve. “And you helped me prove I was a monster.”
Tyler stood up from the stool.
“Don't come visit me again, Dad. When I finish this bid, I’m getting transferred out of state. I never want to see you or Mom again.”
May you like
Tyler banged on the steel door for the guard, leaving Richard Vance sitting alone in the visitor stall, staring into the dark reflection of the reinforced glass.
***
