Prisoner 1478369 looked up from folding the laundry with a start when she heard the prison matron sternly call her number again.
"What is it, ma'am?" she asked respectfully. Collins Women's Correctional Facility was a maximum security prison set in a grim, old-fashioned building in an equally grim, old-fashioned town in the remote wilds of Maine. The focus was more on punishment than rehabilitation and the prisoners were always mindful of their place with those who guarded them or they would be ruthlessly slapped back into it.
"You have a visitor," she was informed curtly.
Prisoner 1478369 was surprised. She had not had a visitor in several months. Not since her appeal had been dismissed, with prejudice. Not that she had expected the lame appeal from an overworked, underpaid legal aid staff to work after she had been convicted even with the legal dream team she had at her disposal. Once she had been convicted, her assets had been frozen and that had been that. When Rich Man's Justice failed, there was no way Poor Man's Justice could trump it.
However, Prisoner 1478369 was intrigued. If not Legal Aid, then who? Though it was visiting day, her family and friends' visits had tapered off by practical necessity. They were not rich and Collins remote location was close enough to make a plane or train trip impractical and expensive. And far enough away to make a bus trip or road trip impractical and time-consuming. She had had to content herself with collect calls to their homes which were short and brief and not that informative.
Still, Prisoner 1478369 was grateful for the interruption, for any interruption of the tedious, monotonous drudgery that was her day. Collins was built back during the day when New England Calvinist parishes controlled the prison and their motto was that "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." In current jargon, wild, out-of-control prisoners were so because they lacked structure and discipline in their outside lives. To that end, Collins was not only a self-supporting prison, but a very tight, structured environment. From sun up to sun down, every minute of the inmates' time was accounted for. If there was a break in work, more was found for them.
Prisoner 1478369 even gratefully endured the degrading strip-search she had to submit to before she entered the visitor's room. Not that there was any chance that forbidden contraband could be slipped to or from her. Collins' prisoners were walled off from their visitors with only a small partition for legal documents to be slipped through by the attorneys who regularly visited them. Even then, there were close-circuit cameras all over the place to monitor the transactions. The only bow to a prisoner's privacy was that there was no audio allowed without a prisoner or a visitor's knowledge.
She got dressed and followed the guard to the cubicle she was assigned to sit in and stopped short with a gasp.
Her visitor was a slender young woman with cool blonde hair and blue eyes that were so intense they almost appeared black.
"Gwen," she gasped.
"Hello, Theresa, surprised to see me?"
Theresa thrust out her chin and glared at Gwen. Even though her immediate reaction was to turn around and leave, she chose to stay rather than go back to the hot, smothering confines of the laundry room she labored in.
"What are you doing here, Gwen?" Theresa asked coolly.
Gwen smiled sweetly. Surprisingly, she did not look as pasty-faced or tense or even lanky as Theresa remembered her. Her face had filled out, her hair was shiny and lustrous and she had put on a little weight. Gone were the fretful lines on her face. She exuded complete relaxation and serenity.
"I'm here to grant you your heart's desire, Theresa," Gwen said. "I'm not sure how current your family and friends have kept you with things, but my divorce to Ethan became final as of today."
A look of elation crossed Theresa's face. "You divorced Ethan?"
"Yes, once he met my terms for his freedom."
"That means that Ethan and Jane and Little Ethan and I can all be a family!" Theresa squealed joyfully. Oh, she knew it was only a matter of time. It was fate!
"Not necessarily," Gwen said.
"What do you mean by that?" Theresa demanded, scowling fiercely at her.
"My terms for setting Ethan free was that he sign off on his parental rights to Jane and deed them over to me," Gwen said. "Seeing as I already had full custody of Jane after his attempt to protect you from the consequences of your actions put him in prison himself, he saw the wisdom of this as it would not disrupt her life in any way."
"I am Jane's mother, not you!"
"You forget that your parental rights to both your children were terminated by the courts when you were convicted and your appeal failed," Gwen reminded her.
"You bitch!" Theresa spat angrily. "Ethan had no right to sign over my little girl to you. Why-" she leaned forward to drop her bombshell in Gwen's lap in order to blow her out of the water. "She's not even Ethan's; she's Fox's daughter and once I tell him the truth he will take her from you so fast, your head will spin-"
She stopped short when Gwen laughed at her.
"Fox already knows," Gwen said, when she stopped laughing. "You see, Jane became sick and when I took her to the pediatrician and got her hospital records, I discovered that, while she didn't have your blood type, she didn't have Ethan's either. As I suspected, she was a perfect match for Fox. So, I approached him and we did a DNA test which proved Fox's paternity conclusively."
"But then, you always knew that, didn't you, Theresa?" Gwen surmised silkily, her eyes hardening. "You were already pregnant by Fox when you assaulted my surrogate and stole my embryos. You had them implanted, confident that there was no way that they could take root. You were going to pass your child off as mine until you got what you wanted out of the deal. I imagine you were the most surprised person on this earth when one of them took. Still, when it came time to reduce the pregnancy, you let 'fate' decide whose fetus would die, because you already knew whose fetus was older and more viable."
"Well if you hadn't stolen Little Ethan from me in the first place-"
"You would have still done what you did," Gwen retorted. "Come on, Theresa, it's just you and me. You had no intentions of ever allowing me to have Ethan's child. Sarah is proof of that. Don't bother to deny it."
"Okay, I won't," Theresa shrugged, with a hard glint of her own in those great doe eyes of hers. "Losing Sarah was God's punishment on you for stealing Ethan from me."
"Perhaps," Gwen said diffidently, "I definitely should have recognized the danger to Sarah in getting back together with Ethan when he had a personal stalker who was a ruthless sociopath."
Theresa set her mouth mulishly at this, but said nothing.
"In any case," Gwen said, "Ethan is no longer my problem."
"So why did Ethan have to sign off on Jane? Fox is the father," Theresa asked curiously. "And why is Fox allowing you to keep his daughter?"
"Since you put Ethan's name on the birth certificate, Ethan was the legal father of record," Gwen answered. "Fox is allowing me to keep his daughter, because he knows he will play an active role in raising her. He and I are sharing custody of Jane, and so much more."
"Meaning?" Theresa sniped pettishly.
"Meaning that Fox and I are getting married tomorrow. Did you forget that it is Fox who got legal custody of and adopted Little Ethan?"
"That means nothing! Jane and Ethan Martin Lopez-Fitzgerald are my children!"
"Soon, Jane and Ethan Martin Lopez-Fitzgerald will no longer exist. Ashley Rebecca and Justin Daniel Hotchkiss-Crane will take their place. Fox and I are cross-adopting to tie things up all nice and tight and legal."
"Justin Daniel?" Theresa asked, startled. "Where did you get that name?"
"From your former son, Theresa. It was his idea. Do you know he loathes both his name and the man he was named after? Not to mention the indifferent little tramp who gave birth to him. It seems he got tired of being an afterthought in your endless quest for Ethan. He wanted his own name and his own identity. So Fox and I took out a name book and he picked the name he liked the best. He picked 'Justin Daniel.' Another irony that you might appreciate. But then I'm forgetting who I'm talking to. Do you want to know what it means? Well, I'll tell you. It means 'Righteous Judge.'" Gwen said archly, staring at a flustered Theresa intently.
"Well," Theresa said huskily, her eyes all misty, "That means nothing. Ethan and I can have more children of our own."
"Why yes, you can," Gwen purred. "Assuming that Ethan is still available and not committed to another woman when you get out-oh, wait…that has never really been an issue with you. Oh, well…assuming you can still give Ethan children by the time you get out in what? Thirty-five years to life?"
"Shut up, Gwen!" Theresa raged.
"Tell me, Theresa, have you even heard from Ethan since he got out of prison?" Gwen asked.
"No," Theresa said sulkily. "Why do you even care?"
"Idle curiosity. Well, it looks like Ethan has acquired some smidgeon of common sense since serving his sentence," Gwen said. "Any communications with another convict is a violation of an ex-convict's parole agreement and would put him right back in prison. It's already bad enough that he lost his right to practice law forever due to his disbarment from covering up your tracks."
"But I'm innocent!" Theresa cried.
"Of course you are," Gwen said sarcastically. "Evil just happens when you are around."
"But it's true," Theresa said.
"Oh, I'm probably the only person in Harmony who believes you, but then you are like the boy who cried wolf. Those two prior attempts on Alistair's life with the poisoned brandy and the poisoned guacamole didn't help your case one iota, Theresa."
"Why do you believe me?" Theresa asked, an ugly suspicion dawning on her.
"Stabbing someone in the chest is an honest, in-your-face action which you are incapable of," Gwen said. "No, Theresa, poisoning someone to death is more your modus operandi. Underhanded, sneaky, duplicitous. Luckily, I think Alistair's real attacker has realized the wisdom of just letting him rot in that hospital bed, completely helpless and inactive, in a near vegetative state for the rest of his miserable life."
"You did it!" Theresa accused Gwen.
"Don't be ridiculous. I haven't forgotten all the antics you pulled with my marriage before you became the prime suspect. What could I possibly stand to gain from that, but making you a rich, powerful widow in hot pursuit of my husband?"
"Then you know who did!"
Gwen smiled darkly. "I do. I was the one person the real perpetrator felt safe in unburdening their soul to. Knowing that I would keep their secret to keep you in here."
"You are framing me and I'm completely innocent!"
"Au contraire, my dear. I am framing you for your crimes-not against the Cranes but my own family. You see, you could go back to your old life with an 'I shot the sheriff, but I didn't shoot the deputy' defense in a regular court. But this is my court, Theresa. You are not being punished for Alistair. You are paying for your crimes against Sarah and Nathan."
"You bitch!"
"I believe you already said that. It's getting monotonous in its repetition." Gwen said, "But I think you need to know the full scope of the sentence I have condemned you to. It's a life sentence, Theresa."
Theresa's mouth popped open at this.
"Alistair has been put in the finest nursing care facilities that money can buy. He's a hearty man. That means he could live for two, three, even four decades. As long as he lives, he's your husband, keeping you unavailable to marry Ethan. Needless to say, as long as Alistair still lives, we Cranes will be showing at your parole hearings to protest any early commutation of your sentence. We will always see you as a threat to our beloved Alistair."
"You may wonder how you ended up in the Collins' Women's Correctional Facility? After all, it is not a well-known prison and there are more modern prisons closer to Harmony. Well, I searched long and hard for the perfect place for you, Theresa and this place filled the bill perfectly. I think you will be pleased to know that it is run by a subsidiary of Crane. It seems that even state institutions are being outsourced to private concerns, these days. All of the prison employees are on the Crane payroll and were personally chosen by me for their job. They are all used to dealing with manipulative little psychopaths like you and are hip to every trick in the book."
Theresa was speechless at this. Gwen smiled.
"You will be assigned the most menial jobs possible and they will consume every waking hour of every day that you spend here. Yes, I found out how you arranged my job and my workload at Cannon. You will be guarded by the most repulsive, brutal, middle aged jerks imaginable who couldn't get lucky in the lowest dive peopled with the drunkest, most disease-raddled, desperate and drug-addicted prostitutes in the real world. Ohh, you can trade your favors to them for some "perks," but you will also be overseen by some of the most bitter harridans imaginable who will loathe you for your youth and beauty. They will see that these men don't get too foolish over a blow job or two where you are concerned. Best of all, you will be competing for whatever privileges are available in this hellhole with other inmates who are just as conniving and ruthless as yourself."
"Now, you are racking your little pea brain to figure out who you can call to help you get out of here, aren't you, Theresa? Well, there is Chad. God knows he certainly ran interference in my marriage to Ethan for you before. But Chad is too busy working on his projects in the music industry out in L.A. Did you know that Whitney and Miles are with him? There's an interesting story to that. It seems that Chad and Whitney aren't brother and sister. TC hated the idea of his daughter with Julian's son so much, he neglected to tell Eve that he substituted his child with my mother for Eve's stillborn daughter. That's right, Theresa. Whitney is my new sister and she wants a relationship with me. But then she got tired of your antics years ago."
"Miguel married Kay. Did you know they both got on at Hotchkiss Industries Graphics Division? Well, they are living in New York now with little Maria and are very, very busy. Sheridan lost Chris and finally married Luis and they got Marty back. They adopted James. Now they are living in Bahrain since Luis is now working at our security division there."
"Have you heard from Pilar, lately, Theresa?" Gwen asked sweetly.
"No," Theresa said sullenly.
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," Gwen commented.
"You will be happy to know that Pilar finally found happiness with Sam Bennett, of all people! Seems he and Ivy broke up over the way she tricked Grace out of his life. Unfortunately she died in an accident with the man she only thought was her husband. But then Sam and Pilar would have never found love with each other. Needless to say Pilar is too busy and fulfilled to hold your hand anymore. Besides she has her other daughter's happiness to concern herself with."
"That leaves Paloma. But then you two have never gotten along very well, have you, Theresa? How interesting that for all the people you fooled with your doe-eyed innocent act, the one person you could never fool was the genuine article. "
"I'm not interested in Paloma or what she is doing. She's taken no interest in me and never visits," Theresa said, rolling her eyes at Gwen's comments.
"Humor me. Besides, if I can't talk to you about Paloma, I can't talk to you about Ethan."
"Ethan?" Theresa cried, "What about Ethan?"
"Hmmph," Gwen sniffed derisively. "I thought that would get your attention. You know you really are like that stupid mutt in the cartoon. Only one word penetrates that thick skull of yours. 'Blah, blah, blah, blah, ETHAN!! Blah, blah, blah blah!"
"Very funny," Theresa said sarcastically.
"You should really thank Paloma. Ethan was at loose ends when he got out of prison and returned to Harmony. Ohh, he got a job as an entry level manager at the Harmony Hotel where she was working as a housekeeper. With her encouragement, he worked hard and pushed himself up the ranks with new ideas and innovations. With his encouragement, Paloma also entered the management program. Well, to make a long story short, Hotchkiss has promoted them as a team and they are going to oversee our Florida chain. Paloma's fluent Spanish should come in handy as we expand to Puerto Rico and eventually Cuba."
"Ohhh," Theresa said faintly and without much encouragement, "That's great."
"Isn't it? Yes, Paloma and Ethan make a great team. So great that it wouldn't surprise me, one little bit, if they team up personally as well as professionally."
"The hell they will!" Theresa exclaimed angrily. "I'm calling Mama-"
"Ohhhh, you can do that, but I wouldn't bother if I were you. You see, Paloma is still very close to Martin and Katherine and, even though Pilar is quite happy with Sam now, she still feels very competitive with Katherine where Paloma is concerned. It's highly unlikely that Pilar is going to run interference in Paloma's life or keep her from being happy with Ethan on your behalf. It makes no sense to alienate the daughter she is trying to rebuild bridges with for the daughter who is lost to her forever. No. All Pilar will do is tell you what she believes to be the truth. Ethan and Paloma have a working relationship. They're friends, nothing more. You're being stupid and paranoid. All the while we both know what a sucker our Prince Charming, with his white knight complex, is for some doe-eyed Cinderella type."
"Nooo," Theresa moaned. "I won't allow it."
"You'll have no choice," Gwen replied.
"Well, Theresa?" Gwen taunted her. "How does it feel to be in my shoes? God knows how hard you worked to wear them. You wanted my life so bad; now you've got it in spades. Just like you made my world a brutal, vicious prison for the past several years, I've put you in one now. Loving a fickle man who quickly loses interest when some sweet new innocent comes along. Childless and loveless. Always having to look over your shoulder. Having to fight for any comfort and happiness you have?"
Gwen stood up and Theresa's eyes widened at the sight of her.
"Yes, there is a reason why Fox and I are getting married so quickly on the heels of my divorce," Gwen said quietly, looking radiant. "I'm pregnant. The fertility doctor was wrong. We were just as surprised as anyone else. Fox had just been dumped by Kay for Miguel and I had just resigned myself to the idea that there was no future with Ethan. We ended up sharing comfort sex and then it turned into something much more. Fox, Justin, Ashley, this new little one and I are going to be a family; a real family together. And I'm not stopping at this one."
"You know, it's funny, Theresa, the irony of the situation." Gwen commented. "I have the life you threw away with Fox to go after mine. And I'm infinitely happier with Fox than I would have ever been with Ethan. As you would have been if you were only able to open your eyes and move on."
"Well, you have Fox now," Theresa cried desperately, like a child whining over the unfairness of having her shiny Ken doll wrenched from her grasp. "Surely, that means I can have Ethan-"
"No, it doesn't," Gwen said. "You will never be allowed to build your life on the wreckage of mine. Ever. Here you are and here you'll stay. Goodbye, Theresa."
"Nooo!" Theresa cried. "Gwen, wait!" She pounded on the glass as Gwen exited the room, but felt her arm grabbed roughly by a hatchet-faced prison matron.
"Prisoner 1478369, your visit is over," the prison matron said sternly. "It is time to return to your duties in the laundry room."
Theresa blinked at this.
"Do you hear me, Prisoner 1478369?" The matron asked sternly, taking in the beautiful brunette with active hatred in her eyes. Theresa just knew that she would relish finding an excuse to punish her.
"Yes, ma'am," Theresa faltered meekly.
"Very good. You will come with me."
Theresa walked out of the visiting room with the matron to the exam room where she submitted to another rough strip-search by her before being returned to the laundry room, passing the leering eyes of the paunchy male guards patrolling the halls.
Later that evening, Theresa hung herself. In the moments of unconsciousness, she hallucinated that she was in hell again with a demon who looked a lot like that gypsy lady she had talked to a lifetime ago.
"Why did I end up where I did," Theresa accused her. "I was promised that if I did everything you wanted, I would get my heart's desire! I sacrificed two innocents for a promise you never made good on!"
"Silence!" The demon roared, "We gave you everything we promised you!"
"I wanted Ethan!"
"Nonsense. You stupid mortals only think you know what you want. The Dark Lord can read your heart as easily as his Heavenly counterpart can. You only saw what Ethan represented. You wanted to be a Crane and you wanted Gwen's life. Well you got everything you wanted."
"This is not exactly what I wanted!"
"You don't always get exactly what you want, even in the spiritual realm, but you always get exactly what you deserve!"
"Nooo!" Theresa screamed and wrestled with the guards as they kept her from asphyxiating.
"Prisoner 1478369!" The hatchet-faced prison matron said sternly, "That is enough!"
Theresa was put into a strait jacket and into a padded room until she could be seen by a prison psychiatrist who put her on medication to keep her docile. She was then put back on laundry detail.
A few months later, Theresa received two letters from Pilar who was too busy with day to day concerns in Harmony to see her. One contained a picture of Fox, Gwen, Ashley Rebecca, Justin Daniel and their new son, Jonathan Fox Hotchkiss-Crane. The other contained news that Ethan and Paloma were now married and expecting a child of their own.
Much as she wanted to vent her hysterics, Theresa knew better than to bother. She had worked too long and too hard and had submitted to too many degrading situations to get out of that hellishly hot laundry room to ruin it now. She put the letters away and hurried to the sewing room where she could mend the prison clothing and linen in its airy coolness.