“Yeah, that guy.” I nodded, remembering. “His wife came to the hospital in Virginia, and they told me who she was before I ever talked to her. My stomach was all tied up before she even walked into the room. I mean, I’d watched her husband die, ya know? I couldn’t do anything about it. Even though I told them to kill me, it didn’t make any difference—they wouldn’t listen. I think they wanted it to be him because he wasn’t military and because he did have a family.”
I shifted and bumped the edge of the metal bed with my shoe. The clang from the springs reverberated and caught my attention. I stared down at the base of the bed, saw the loops meant for restraints again, and could nearly feel the sandy walls of the hole around my shoulders.
“What did she say to you, Evan?”
I shook my head a bit to clear it.
“She came up and sat down next to me,” I said as the detail of the memory returned. “For the longest time we just looked at each other, and eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I started blathering about how sorry I was and about how I tried to get them to take me instead, but they wouldn’t listen. I probably would have dropped down to my knees and started crying, but she stopped me.”
I turned my head to Mark and looked him straight in the eye.
“That’s when she said it was all okay,” I told him. “I figured she was going to start telling me how it wasn’t my fault and there was nothing I could do—the shrinks in the hospital in Germany had said that—but she didn’t. She told me it was okay because she was glad. She was glad he was gone, and now she and her girls could move on with their lives without constantly being in his shadow. She said he was never there for them, and now that he was dead, she could use the insurance money to start up the flower shop she always wanted and he wouldn’t support.”
Mark’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“She didn’t fucking care,” I told him. I could feel the tension in my voice as much as I could hear it. “She was happy he was dead. I was willing to die for him—a guy whose name I didn’t even know—and the person who should have cared about him the most didn’t give a shit.”
My sides and stomach tightened up as I remembered the look of…of elation in her eyes as she told me about her business venture and how excited she was to be her own boss and run her own company. I had watched her and waited for her to tell me he was smacking her around or doing things to their daughters that he shouldn’t, but she said none of that. He just hadn’t liked the idea of her going into business on her own instead of working her steady, corporate job.
My throat seized up, and I forced myself to swallow. It hurt, but the pain was nothing compared to what was happening in my head. I needed to crawl back inside again. I needed to stop thinking and stop remembering.
But I couldn’t.
“That’s when I figured it out,” I said quietly. “People live and they die, and it doesn’t fucking matter to anyone around them. Whatever happens, happens. People move on, and they’re probably better off because of it.”
“That’s what changed you,” he whispered. “I knew there was something that made you different from how all the reports from your rescue described you. I should have pressed you before when I first thought there was something about that video you weren’t telling me. I assumed it was something they did off camera—something classified.”
I shook my head.
“I’m very good at being who I am,” I told him. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“Who are you, Evan?”
I shook my head.
“Doesn’t matter. Not now.” I’d fucked up far too publicly, and I couldn’t hide it. It occurred to me that Rinaldo might never refer to me as “son” again, and I leaned back against the head of the medical center cot and closed my eyes. My heart was starting to race, and I feared losing the handcuffs and a bit of privacy weren’t going to be enough to allow me to sleep.
“It matters to me.” Mark’s voice was quiet but earnest.
I shook my head.
Nothing about the conversation was going to go anywhere, so I ended it with my silence.
Chapter 2—Possible Forgiveness
With the illness of the inmates identified as the flu instead of the breakfast sausages, I was permanently assigned into the general inmate population to make room for the physically sick. I remained in the same maximum security cell, and there was always a guard outside of it, but at least I wasn’t shackled to the bedrail constantly. I was even allowed into the prison’s gym to work out and up to the top of the building for a little outside time.
Basketball hoops and prisoners hanging out and smoking filled the triangular shaped exercise area at the very top of the building. I wasn’t much of a basketball player on a good day, and I hadn’t had too many good days recently, so I stuck with sitting up against the wall and alternating between staring at the cloudy sky and staring at the cement under my prison-issue sneakers.
My head was swimmy from lack of sleep, so I closed my eyes and tried to stop the accompanying nausea by swallowing repeatedly. It helped a little but not enough. I had been thinking about my dog, Odin, and wondered if I would be able to sleep if he were allowed in a cell with me.
Lia should have him now as one of the arresting officers had promised. She would take good care of him—I had no doubt about that. He liked her, too. He’d taken to her pretty much the moment she lay down in my bed, much like I had taken to her.
“Arden, right?”
I opened my eyes and looked at the heavily muscled, thirty-something guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a distinctly Mexican accent but didn’t recognize him. There wasn’t any reason to respond to him either, so I didn’t. He wasn’t to be deterred and sat down next to me.
“I met you once,” he claimed. “The name’s Pablo. I ran snow for your boss before I got caught for possession with intent. I got sentenced to six-to-ten, but they haven’t gotten around to moving me to Marion yet.”