Chapter 24 - Watching a disgraced former socialite walk out of prison as an impoverished broken woman ignored by high society in Chicago snow today.
Seven years later, on a freezing February morning, Victoria Vance was released on early parole from the state correctional facility.
Wearing a plain winter coat provided by the prison, she carried a small paper bag containing her remaining personal belongings onto the sidewalk.
She stood under the gray sky, looking around at a world that had moved on completely without her during her long years of isolation.
Her husband was serving twenty years in federal custody, her high-society friends had blocked her name, and her wealth was gone forever.
She opened an old newspaper at a nearby bus stop, seeing a front-page article about Lily Montgomery's latest philanthropic victory in Washington.
The photograph showed Lily, Daniel, little Clara, and Harrison standing together outside the White House, smiling in radiant happiness and success.
Victoria folded the newspaper slowly, sitting alone on the cold bench as tears froze on her cheeks in the howling Chicago wind.
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Her envy and malice had cost her everything, leaving her a forgotten ghost in the very society she had once sought to dominate.
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