Chapter 16 - The Father's Desperation
A week before the criminal trial was scheduled to begin, my attorney contacted me with an unexpected development. My father’s defense lawyer had reached out requesting a private proffer session—a sit-down meeting where my father would admit to his role in the crimes in exchange for a lighter sentencing recommendation from the prosecution, independent of my mother and sister.
I watched the session through a one-way glass mirror in the District Attorney’s conference room. My father sat slumped in a chair, wearing a cheap suit that hung loosely on his frame. He looked like an old, broken man, stripped of the patriarchal authority he had always used to silence me at the dinner table.
"It was Susan and Chloe's idea," my father mumbled into the microphone, his hands shaking as he held a cup of water. "Chloe was always in debt. She couldn't keep a job. Susan said Elena had plenty of money, that she wouldn't even miss it. I... I set up the Apple Pay on my laptop because Chloe didn't know how to bypass the security prompts. We just wanted to make Chloe happy so she would stop screaming at us."
"And you were aware that your youngest daughter had just been severely burned by boiling tea when you attempted the seven-thousand-dollar charge?" the prosecutor asked coldly.
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My father looked down at the table, tears spilling onto his cheeks. "We thought... we thought if we secured the venue, the fight would blow over. We thought Elena would just pay it like she always did."
Listening to him confess, I felt no anger left—only pity. He had traded his integrity, his retirement, and his relationship with his only stable child just to appease a spoiled bully and an enabling wife. The prosecutor rejected his plea for total immunity, offering him a plea deal of five years probation and mandatory restitution if he testified against Chloe and my mother in court. He took the deal.
