Beyond Words Magazine

Family Matters

“You have to live with the consequences of your actions,” she says. “But I don’t have to live with you.”

She sits slumped at the breakfast table across from me, looking much older than the middle-aged, patrician wife and mother she’d been before this happened. Why argue? I’m to blame in ways she can’t imagine.

“We need to go,” I say, rising to leave.

“I’m ready,” she says. "We’ll present a united front for the cameras and my son, but you’ll be living elsewhere for the foreseeable future.” I nod my understanding.

When we arrive at the courthouse, the press throngs to catch a glimpse or get a quote from us, the newly infamous couple: a billionaire magnate and his brilliant bioengineer-turned-politician wife. My wealth will insulate me. I'll see to that. But she'll be memorialized as the diabolical scientist whose ambition destroyed her own son. No one will be shocked by the divorce.

Microphones thrust toward our faces. Cameras record our every move. Like falsely humble celebrities, we lower our heads and push through the crowd as quickly as possible. I hold her close, clutching her elbow to guide her along. Talking heads gush about what a loving husband I am, but later she will angrily point out the bruises I left on her arm. We sit together, mutely watching the look of disbelief on her only child’s face as the charges are summarized and the sentence pronounced. Her precious boy, now a man in his mid-twenties whose mother I married when he was five. Forever branded a murderer. Not a huge stretch for a trust fund baby from whom nothing has ever been asked, much less demanded. Constantly in trouble with the law; assuming the family name would cover his sins.

Now he stands convicted of a young woman’s death; a photogenic lobbyist with a bright future in D.C. Often spotted in the company of elite power brokers. Mostly men old enough to be her father. She was always smiling, deferential, eager. After she failed to show up for work, her body was discovered strangled and fully clothed in her small but expensively appointed apartment. No signs of forced entry, robbery, or sexual assault. A professional scrub of the crime scene. All that remained were two partially empty whiskey glasses on the kitchen counter and a few fingerprints. 

My stepson swore he’d never met the victim. His DNA confirmed otherwise. To the end, I thought he would be exonerated due to circumstantial evidence. If I was wrong about this, then what else? He will be sentenced under a law engineered by his own mother mere months before the alleged crime occurred. His fate will unfold in a nearby high-security psychiatric facility. The punishment is designed to last only a few hours; its impact, a lifetime. 

At the time she wrote the bill, she needed an edge for her re-election. Only she and I know the idea was mine. Crime rates were soaring, and the public was frustrated by empty promises and growing fear. This was weaponized technology at its worst but a fitting punishment for those who committed the vilest crimes. Appealing to public hysteria and intended to set her apart from the pack of jackals posturing for her position. 

Voters loved the initial concept. It was an audacious measure to be sure. Even I, who usually remained quietly in the background, publicly declared the legislation “a brilliant innovative response to lawless behavior.” She never envisioned the public’s gladiator-like glee or her son as the first guinea pig. 

Following the initial punishment, the microchip is programmed to neutralize the perpetrator immediately if thought patterns or body chemistry indicate the potential for violence, automatically eliminating repeat offenders. Maximum-security prisons have already begun closing in anticipation of fewer inmates; the empty buildings converted into low cost housing. Our bodies tense as the judge describes the process now familiar to everyone. The microchip will force my stepson to relive his crimes, this time with himself as the victim. 

Only he won't die as his victim did; he will experience all the pain and fear inflicted on her and then, at the precise moment of death, regain consciousness with full memory of his own actions. This was never intended as reform. It was meant to satisfy the public lust for revenge. As we leave the courtroom, I lower my head and reveal my despair for the cameras to capture. But I am lost in thought imagining a different scene. An alluring woman too confident for her own good. A scarf pulled tight, then tighter. The look of stunned acceptance as life ebbs. A single call to an unlisted number.