“Did you just literally walk out of your office?” I asked, still trying to compute that he was here. That he’d decided in mere minutes to join me. I hadn’t even asked him to.

  But he’d done it. Just like he’d flown home from New York last weekend for me.

  This man.

  He was everything to me.

  He showed me his love every day.

  “Sure did. Turns out emails can be answered tomorrow,” he said as he flipped on the blinker to turn right.

  “Even though you can’t go in? They only let family and approved visitors in.”

  “I’m going for you, Shan. I’m here for you. Whatever you need. I’ll drive you, and wait for you, and be there for you.”

  I brought my hand to my chest, overwhelmed by what he’d done. How he’d chosen me yet again.

  I squeezed his thigh. “I love you, Brent Nichols. Have I told you that lately?”

  He made a show of peering at the clock on the dash. “Earlier this morning you did. But I like hearing it.”

  “I love you,” I said again with a smile.

  “Music to my ears.” He pointed to the radio. “Speaking of, let’s crank up some tunes. You got a desert driving playlist? We need something to rock out to.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Would ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ be too ironic?”

  “Irony is my middle name.”

  I turned on Johnny Cash and held my husband’s hand the whole way through the desert as the sun rose high in the sky, blazing through the windshield, the road unfurling before us in a slate ribbon. My heart was full, in spite of where we were headed.

  The air-conditioning hummed, blasting out sheets of coolness in the stark visiting room. I rubbed my bare arms, wishing I’d brought a sweater. I didn’t remember it being so chilly the last time I was there. Perched on the edge of a hard plastic chair at a table inside a small room, I waited.

  I tried to conjure up an image of my mother, tried to remember how she’d looked at Christmas, but the images that paraded before my eyes were older ones, so much older. Sewing my leotard, the corner of her lips screwed up in concentration as she threaded. Placing a Band-Aid on my knee when I’d skidded on my bike. Holding my hand as she walked me to school. So young, so vibrant, so blonde. Just like me. She’d had the same bright blonde hair. Absently, I raised my hand to my now-brown strands.

  Someone opened the door.

  I rose. Nerves skittered across my flesh. The corrections officer appeared first, a tall, sturdy woman with dark hair in a braid. Holding the door open, the guard nodded and grunted a curt “Hello.”

  “Hello,” I said to Clara, the word feeling strange on my tongue. Even after all these years, it still never felt normal to be conversing with a corrections officer.

  My mother entered next, and I did my best impression of a sealed-up box. Otherwise I’d fall to pieces. Keeping my chin up, my muscles steady, I managed a simple “Hi, Mom.”

  My mother was a shadow of the woman she’d once been. Her hair was the color of dishwater, her cheeks were sunken, and her emerald eyes were a shade of sallow. Even so, she smiled. Her lips, with their cracked red lipstick, quivered as she held out her arms for a hug.

  “My baby,” said the woman in orange.

  I walked into her arms, embarrassment and shame smacking me from all directions. I wasn’t ashamed this woman was my mother. I was ashamed for what she’d become, for the choices she’d made that led her to this. Thin arms wrapped around me, arms that had once been strong and maternal.

  “Oh, baby. My baby. It is so good to see you again,” she said, her mouth closer to my neck than I would have liked.

  “It’s good to see you too, Mom,” I said, lying, but knowing it was only a white lie. It wouldn’t hurt anyone for me to say that.

  “I’m so happy you’re here.” Another firm grip, then I felt a drop of wetness. A tear had fallen on my bare shoulder as she embraced me harder and tighter, as if she could graft her body onto mine.

  “All right, Prince. That’s enough,” the CO said, her command clear.

  My mom pulled away and shot the woman a contrite look. “Sorry. I just missed my baby girl so much. She’s a dancer. Isn’t she lovely, Clara?” My mom held out her arms to me as if she were presenting me on Wheel of Fortune.

  “Mom, stop,” I said, embarrassed now for a whole new reason. I glanced at the woman. “We’re fine. We’ll sit down now.”

  “Behave, Prince,” the woman warned as she shut the door, leaving me alone with my mother.

  47

  Dora

  They always told me to behave, but what did they know? Had Clara spent eighteen years without her babies?

  I didn’t think so. I had, and I would damn well hug my daughter. My angel girl.

  But I had to play the game, because that was what this was here.

  A game.

  A system.

  And I was figuring it out.

  Shannon sat at the gray plastic table, and I spat out the first thing that I had to tell her.

  The indignity of all this. How the guards were punishing me for fighting for my rights.

  Fighting for freedom.

  “Baloney,” I said, embarrassed and frustrated all at once.

  “Baloney?”

  “That’s what they fed me the other day. Baloney on white bread. Can you believe it? Baloney.” I brought my hand to my eyes, covering them, the memory of the cold cuts too much to bear. “I hate baloney.”

  “Tell them you hate it,” she said calmly.

  That was my girl. So smart. She knew what to do, but so did I. “I tried. I asked for turkey. They don’t think I deserve turkey.”

  “Did they say that?”

  I raised my face, whipped my head back and forth, then whispered the cold truth. “They don’t have to. I can tell. They don’t like me here. They don’t like me at all.”

  “Mom,” she said, so comforting and caring. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because I’m trying to—” I wanted to say more. Dear God, I did. But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. The temptation though . . . it was so strong. I clamped my lips shut, refusing to speak. The guards didn’t like me yearning for true justice, trying to find it. So they fed me barely edible food and ignored my requests for more. Another punishment.

  “Because why?” Shannon pressed.

  “Because,” I said through my fingers over my mouth. “Because. Because. Because.”

  My baby girl held up her hands in defeat. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

  She was here. For me. I didn’t want her to feel defeat. If I could only say something. How I longed to speak the truth. “Because of what happened,” I snapped out, a tornado inside me.

  “Because of why you’re here?” she asked gently.

  But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t the reason.

  I shook my head, whipping it back and forth so rapidly it started to hurt. Everything hurt. “No. Not that. Not that at all. It’s because of the—” I stopped talking and jammed my fist in my mouth, biting hard on the knuckles.

  Keep it inside, Dora.

  Keep it inside.

  Don’t say a word.

  Don’t ever say a goddamn word.

  My girl cringed and reached for my hand, trying to remove it from my mouth. But I was her mother. I was tough. She had no idea how strong I was. No one did. I was so damn strong. I wouldn’t budge.

  She tried again. I bit deeper, my teeth digging into my own flesh.

  “Mom, stop that,” she said in a terrified whisper. “Your CO will come back and you’ll have to go. You’re making a scene.”

  But I had no choice. I had to shut up. I couldn’t chance it. This was the only way. I crunched down, digging into the flesh of my hand.

  “You’re going to draw blood. Stop!”

  The door swung open.

  “Enough, Prince,” the corrections officer barked.

  I dropped my fist from my mouth, shoulders sagging, body limp, so tired. Clara held up her hand and raised her index finger. “One more shot, Prince. One more shot.”

  If only.

  “Okay,” I muttered, numb now, only numb.

  I looked up at my baby. She stared at my hand. It had deep grooves in it, red and raw, on the cusp of bleeding.

  “What was that all about?” she asked, bewildered, horrified.

  My stomach clenched, and my heart—it ached so bad. So painfully. Full of the desire to tell her. I’d thought I could. But looking at her face, I couldn’t.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled. Keep it inside. “Just nothing.”

  “Okay, then. Are you still watching General Hospital?”

  Something happy. Something light. I felt a spark inside me as she asked about my favorite show. I rattled off couples, and plotlines, and twists and turns. “It’s okay that I’m spoiling it?”

  She laughed lightly. “It’s okay, Mom.”

  I told her more and more.

  But after fifteen minutes, I stopped. I couldn’t waste time on a soap. She was here. I needed to know all about my baby girl. “Tell me about work. How are your shows? I want to know everything.” I was desperate for something good. For anything good. And Shannon was all the good in the world.

  I listened as she told me about her shows, and I pictured her dancing, imagining it, seeing it.

  Even if she wasn’t the one onstage anymore, I always saw her dancing. I saw her as she was before. I saw her as the thirteen-year-old girl I’d had to leave.

  My reasons.

  As she spoke, she looked happy, so happy, but then she turned serious, meeting my eyes. “You said earlier you wanted to talk about something that would change everything. Is the case being reopened?”

  I sat up straight, hope springing up in me. Could it be? Was that even a possibility. “Is it?”

  She sighed. “Mom, I don’t know. I thought that’s why you wanted to talk. You told Ryan on the phone, and you told me earlier today that you had news that would change everything.”

  She placed her hands on the table, and I reached for them, gripping hers, needing the connection. “I do have news.”

  “Tell me,” she said, desperate. “Did someone find new evidence? I heard the DA was talking to Stefano. Is there something going on? Tell me, Mommy.”

  Mommy.

  She hardly ever called me that.

  I hadn’t heard her say that word in years.

  I loved it so much. It was my heart.

  But I didn’t have an answer to her question.

  “I don’t know anything about Jerry,” I said.

  “What did you see your lawyer about, then?” She squeezed my fingers, like she was urging me to speak.

  Like she wanted to know what I had to say.

  Like she might believe me.

  My chest rose and fell. I breathed heavily. Then faster. A lone, silent tear streaked from my eye. I could tell her this. Yes, I could tell her this. This was what I wanted her to know. “It’s about Luke.”

  48

  Shannon

  I flinched. I hadn’t heard that name in years. There had been no reason to even think of Luke Carlton. He was long gone. The local piano teacher my mother had had a brief affair with when I was thirteen was ancient history. The police had questioned him after my father’s death, but it had been perfunctory. He’d never been a suspect. He’d had no connection at all to the crime.

  “What about Luke?” I asked carefully. I wasn’t wild about the man, not by any stretch, but there was a big difference between sleeping with a married woman and being a killer. There was no evidence to show my mother’s lover was involved in Dad’s death in any way, except by loving the wrong person at the wrong time. “The police cleared him, Mom. In just two days after the murder, he was cleared of any suspicion.”

  Her face pinched, her eyes welling with something like long-lost love. My God, did she still long for the man?

  “I know he didn’t do it,” she said protectively. “He’s not that kind of man. He’s not the one who shot your daddy in the driveway. And it wasn’t me either. It was a robbery gone wrong,” she said, sticking chapter and verse to her age-old defense, as if the open wallet and stolen bills proved her innocence.

  I sighed deeply, my heart cratering as my mom toed the old party line. After the baloney obsession and the General Hospital chatter and the gnawing on her own damn fist, we were back to this? After all the begging and the letters and the madness, we were at square one. “Then why are you bringing up Luke?”

  My mom peered at the door, making sure it was shut, then looked back at me. She lowered her voice to a feather of a whisper. “He said he’d wait for me. He promised he’d wait for me. That’s what he told me. He meant it. I know he meant it. Don’t you believe me?”

  I sucked in a heavy sigh, then reminded her of the bitter truth. “You’re in for life. He’s going to be waiting a long time.”

  She stabbed the table with her finger. “Not if they find the real killer.”

  “If they were going to, it would have happened already. It’s been almost eighteen years since you came here,” I said, reminding my mother that time was not on her side. I didn’t bother to bring up the powerful evidence that had put her here in the first place, including the shooter’s own testimony that she’d hired him.

  For a moment, she looked smug, nodding confidently. “Oh, it’ll happen. They’ll realize.”

  I bit back all the things I wanted to say, all the truths I wanted to remind her of, because I didn’t want to rehash the case. I didn’t want to play courtroom trial again. “What does this have to do with Luke?”

  My mom leaned across the table, coming as close to me as she could, and said in a fast breath, “Because he promised to wait for me. He swore he would. And I just found out he got married. One of my girlfriends on the outside told me. Baby, he married another woman and he was supposed to wait for me. For me, for me, for me. And now he’s with someone else, and I’m all alone.” She dropped her head to the table, tears spilling like summer rain from her eyes.

  I brushed a hand over my mother’s limp hair. “That’s what you talked to your lawyer about?”

  My mom nodded her head against the table as she sobbed. “Yes. Because it proves something. And lawyers need proof.”

  “What does it prove?”

  “It proves that Luke lied to me,” she said, her voice breaking like waves. “He lied when he said he’d wait.”

  “And that changes everything?”

  “Yes. It changes everything for me. Everything.” My mom cried more, a river of tears flowing onto the plastic table as I stroked her hair, some kind of strange relief washing over me even in the midst of all this hollowness, all this hurt for the woman my mother had become.

  Through it all, one fact remained starkly clear.

  The case was closed. My mother’s fate had been irrevocably sealed eighteen years ago, and now she was paying for her crime in so many ways. With her life, with her health, and with her sanity.

  Dora Prince lived in her own world, and she’d done it all to herself.

  49

  Brent

  “Skittles? Salt and vinegar chips? Twizzlers?”

  I plucked the snack foods from a dusty shelf, waving each bag in front of my wife.

  She crinkled her nose. “I’m not that hungry.”

  “Yeah, these might be stale.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I don’t think many people come around here too often.” I peered at the expiration date on the Skittles. “Whoa. These Skittles were past their prime two years ago.”

  She laughed half-heartedly as I dropped the unwanted snacks on the shelves.

  “I’ll just get a soda,” she said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the fountain drinks at the Lucky Seven Gas & Go somewhere in the middle of the desert. As far as I knew, we were halfway between Hawthorne and Vegas, which meant two and a half more hours of cruising south on the highway to home.

  “Shan, you need to eat. You haven’t had anything all day.”

  “Maybe just some pretzels, then. Pretzels taste expired anyway.”

  I grabbed a pretzel pack with gusto, as if my enthusiasm for potentially out-of-date road-trip snacks would somehow buoy her spirits. She walked to the soda fountain, grabbed a cup, and pressed it against the Diet Coke spout. She leaned forward slowly, as if she was starting to tip over, then rested her forehead against the dispenser. She’d slept the whole ride back so far, slumped against the passenger seat with her shades on, after she’d left the prison and given me the CliffsNotes of her visit as we drove out of Hawthorne.

  Crossing the distance in a second, I took the cup from her. “I’ll do it.”

  This time, she rested her head against my chest. “Thank you.”

  It was only a soda. That was all I was doing. Filling a flimsy paper cup at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. But it was something I alone could do for her right now. And she needed it.

  I finished filling the cup and popped a lid on it.

  “I’m sorry I made you drive me all the way there for nothing,” she said.

  “Hey. You did not make me do anything. I chose to. And it was not nothing.” I set the cup down on the counter, and lifted her chin. “It was not nothing.”

  “But you took the day off, and we had to cancel our dinner, and it’s just the same old stuff with my mom.”

  “Then that’s something. That’s exactly what you needed to know.”

  “The same old stuff?”

  I ran my finger along her jaw, certain that this visit today mattered. That it could help my wife let go of the past. Let loose some of the stranglehold it’d had on her at times.

  “Yes, the same old stuff. Because now you know. Now you know that nothing has changed. Now you can stop worrying that something is going to be different. This is the same stuff she did to you in college,” I said, holding her gaze firmly. “She tried to work you over. She tried to get you to believe her madness. And you are good and loving, and you did the right thing by seeing her, Shan. You visited her; you listened to her. You did a loving thing without compromising who you are. And now, you can let it go. The past is the past.”