The Confession of Brooke Sara Jacks

Andrea Altomare

Matthew Mounteer

Prof. Hulanicki

ENGL. 2

The Confession of Brooke Sara Jacks

Dear Diary,

This will be my final entry outside the walls of Chowchilla State Women’s Prison where I, Brooke Sara Jacks, will begin my life sentence and live out my remaining days as a maximum security inmate. In recounting the events of the past two years, I am forcing myself to accept my punishment by retelling my experiences in this entry as a means to cope with my actions and hopefully gain some sense of understanding and start to mentally rebuild myself.

It all started when Timothy O’Ryan moved to Carmel. I had seen him walk into my coffee shop, The Works, which I bought a little over 5 years ago. People on the Peninsula spoke of him in such high regard with his Harvard diploma and success in the midwest with oil fracking, all of which he later on confessed to me was a blatant lie and that he was not a self made millionaire and had made no more money in North Dakota than when he started out in the oil business. My mom, Kaneko Jacks, was immediately enticed with him one day when he struck up a conversation with her at The Works and she somehow alluded to the fact that she was a rich widow. Perhaps it was her six inch stiletto heels or her Prada handbag that O’Ryan seemed to engage with. He knew my mom had a lot of money and they eventually started dating and got married in June of 2012. I immediately had my suspicions about O’Ryan’s motives. Following the wedding, neither of them ever really said a word to each other and it was almost as if they did not even know each other. I had heard my mom crying one night in the bathroom and could not help but feel sorry for her. Neither of us really knew anything about O’Ryan and it was as if they jumped into a marriage out of convenience rather than love for each other. However, towards August he seemed to undergo a complete shift of character and began to at least appear to have some interest in my mom. Their relationship started to look up. I later found out that this shift occurred because he had owed people some money and getting my mom to confide and trust him would lead him to what he was ultimately interested in — her money. Six months after the wedding, my mom had made him her financial advisor, unwittingly giving him full access to her financial accounts in order to pay off his debtors.

My feelings changed one fateful day in October of last year. My mom left the house for the afternoon and I spent some time with Timothy that morning looking at some new kitchen appliances. I knew my mom was happy for the first time in a long while and was happy for her, but I couldn’t help but feel an attraction to Timothy myself. He was not only handsome and seemingly successful, but he was kind and really seemed to care for us both. When we got home that afternoon, I could not hold it back any longer and I revealed my feelings for O’Ryan to him. Later that night he confessed that he felt the same way about me and admitted that he was attracted to my mom for her money but his true affection was for me. It was wrong and despicable but Timothy and I had an affair that lasted for 4 months without anybody knowing until I received an envelope in the mail one day in January that contained a photograph of us kissing at the Farmers’ Market on Alvarado Street a week before. The photo included a letter signed by Thom Akeman, the local journalist who had ruined the lives of many people with his exaggerated reporting in The Herald. He used to come into The Works every couple of weeks to buy a specific Jamaican blend of raw coffee beans that he used to grind at home. With all the suffering and pain he caused so many people for exposing them in the media, I am not surprised that he wanted to watch his back because he had burned a lot of wealthy and powerful people in the paper.