The Voting Machine

The Sunflower Foundation

Todd and I met in a small room outside the courtroom. My deputy escort waited outside in the hall while I told my lawyer about the last twenty-four hours, starting with the news of Gina's death in India and leading up to the car crash that sent me to jail.

Todd heard about the Twin Towers lockdown, which was reported in the news that morning. The old inmate who died was a repeat sex offender who was being transferred to a prison upstate. Todd knew how things worked in the jail system and speculated on how it might've gone down.

"This inmate who died had multiple convictions of crimes against underage girls. Sometimes the guards will find out about an inmate and put him in a pod with the craziest guys on the floor. They figure he's human garbage anyway and they want to get rid of him. The Sheriff's Department says they're trying to find out who killed him, but I doubt they ever will. The guy's lawyers made the jail produce a public list of all the inmates on the floor."

I asked Todd about his own life, hoping to turn the conversation to a happy topic for a change. He had recently married and become a father.

"Things will get better for you, Temo," Todd said. "We'll get you back you to your family. Based on your trial, I know that Suzy loves you more than anything."

"She says I am not the same man I was back then. She's right. I have to find a way to get back to who I used to be."

"You will, Temo. You have people who want to help you, people like my client. Nobody does it alone."

"So will I get to meet this mystery person, your client, the executive director of the Sunflower Foundation?"

"Sure," Todd said, glancing at the entrance to our room. "She's coming right now."

It was Annabelle Davis, the daughter of ex-Passion CEO Marcus. She was wearing a black shirt and jeans. Her blonde hair was tied back and she wore light make-up to accentuate her porcelain skin and the mole on her cheek.

When I first met the billionaire CEO's daughter, she was a desperate junkie snorting heroin in a drug dealer's back lot carriage house. Like so many addicts, her life had been a mess for so long it seemed impossible to untangle.

Growing up, Annabelle's parents had tried to groom her into becoming the perfect American princess, sending her off to elite prep schools and making sure she mastered an assortment of talents such as ballet, French, and horse riding. She was supposed to have a comfortable and happy life, one befitting the daughter of one of the greatest businessmen in the country.

Things didn't work out as planned. After her parents' divorce, Annabelle got mixed up in drugs and juvenile crimes. She was strong and cunning like her father. During her teenage years, she learned how to wrest control away from her parents and set off in her own direction. When she won access to her inheritance at age 18, she took the money and went underground, eluding her father's detectives for years as she battled a growing problem with drug abuse.

After I met Annabelle in her pusher's shooting gallery, she was able to turn her life around. She stopped snorting heroin and contacted her father, who by that time was losing his company and under investigation for securities fraud.

The last time I'd seen her, she took me to visit Marcus in a federal detention center, where he was awaiting an indictment hearing. The daughter and father began arguing over money, debating what to do with the "Golden Parachute," a payment of $300 million that Marcus received when the Passion board of directors removed him as CEO.

Annabelle told me once that I was the reason she could turn her life around, breaking out of her cycle of aimlessness and self-abuse. The example of my life at that time, trying to be a good person even when things were going very badly for me, gave her the strength to rise up above addiction and despair.

Now, sitting in the courthouse more than eight months since our last meeting, the tables were turned. I was the one who was in trouble. She was my guardian angel, bailing me out of a terrible situation.

I could see that Annabelle looked even better than the last time we'd met. She had been taking care of herself. Her eyes were clear and her skin was smooth. She had a simple and unassuming look that seemed to prove the point that she could be disarmingly beautiful without any effort.

She was also poised and powerful and intelligent, very convincing as the director of a non-profit foundation despite her youth. After years in the wilderness, she had finally assumed the role that always seemed her birthright. She was the virtuous princess, a warrior for noble causes with a kingdom under her command

Yet I could sense that something still wasn't quite right with Annabelle. I could see the hint of insecurity and sadness in her eyes. It wasn't so long ago that her soul was in total shambles. She was an angel who had fallen into the depths of hell. And now she was trying to fly again, up toward the heavens, but it was an unsteady journey. She was still seeking to restore her purity and confidence, the two treasures that someone, or something, stole from her long ago.

"You're Todd's client?" I asked her. "You're the one who paid my bail?"

"I am sure this is a surprise, Temo. It was a surprise for me as well."

"Tell me about the Sunflower Foundation. Sounds like a lot has changed since the last time we met."

"Temo, you remember when we visited my father in prison. He wanted me to be the beneficiary of his $300 million golden parachute."

"That's right, but you wouldn't take it. You refused. You said you'd been addicted to his money all your life and you were going cold turkey."

"Well, we managed to work out a compromise. He wanted me to have the money. He was worried he would lose it anyway with the investigation and all the shareholder lawsuits. He thought it would be a waste and wanted it to go to something good. So we agreed on a way for him to transfer the money in a way that it wouldn't be exclusively mine. He and I agreed to use the money to set up a charity. I would act as the steward of the money but it wouldn't belong to me."

"So that's how you created the Sunflower Foundation."

"That's right. The foundation is my life now. It takes up every waking moment. It's made my father very happy too."

"So he's doing OK?"

"He is still in prison. He was convicted on the Fed's charges but he's going for an appeal. I think there's a pretty good chance he'll win the appeal, but either way, he's doing fine. He believes he'll be vindicated. He believes that he'll be remembered for the contributions he's made to society. Sunflower is a big part of that."

"So this foundation you run is for rehab?"

"It's not specifically set up for one kind of cause. It's set up to fund things that my father and I believe in. I take my dad's advice but ultimately it's my decision. I started with causes that are most important to me."

"I had my own struggle with drugs. Millions of people are crippled by addiction. They can't contribute. They end up in jail or on the streets. And the research shows that in most cases, there's some kind of underlying condition. A troubled mind. Something traumatic from their past. There are treatments that can address the root cause and help people recover, but right now they aren't getting the funding. It's the prisons that get all the funding, and the drug enforcement agencies and foreign aid to the Mexican army. The federal government is going to spend billions of dollars putting drones on the border to shoot down drug runners, but we can't get money to counsel battered women for substance abuse. So when I started the Foundation, this was the first thing we focused on, helping people with drug problems."