“You have exactly what you built, Mother,” I said, my voice devoid of anger, devoid of hatred, devoid of anything at all. It was just a statement of fact.
“We are your family!” she shrieked, a sudden flash of her old manipulative anger rising to the surface before drowning in desperation again. “You can’t do this to your own blood! We protected you! We loved you!”
“Protected me?” The absurdity of the word almost made me laugh, a harsh, dry sound. “You erased me. For ten years, you let the world believe I was a traitor so you wouldn’t have to admit your golden boy was a terrorist sympathizer. You sat on that stand today and tried to convince a jury I was clinically insane to protect your bank accounts.”
“We were trying to save Grant!” she sobbed, falling to her knees on the cold concrete.
“And I was trying to save the people Grant was destroying,” I replied, looking down at her. “You made a choice ten years ago, Judith. You looked at a forged piece of paper and decided it was worth more than your daughter’s life. Then you made another choice today.”
