Chapter 33 Ella

Chapter 33

Ella

Jonah sits beside me on the couch.

Jonah.

Sits.

Beside me.

On.

The.

Couch.

Mom holds a tissue over her mouth and nose, seated on my opposite side, stroking my hair back as my body shivers violently through the earthquake.

"I told you to wait in the kitchen," Mom scolds, her voice a distorted garble. "I wanted to ease her into it. She's still fragile, Jonah."

"I've waited years. I couldn't wait any longer."

This is a trick.

This isn't real.

I'm still in a coma.

Holy shit— I'm still in a coma.

I pinch my skin, pull at my hair, stomp my feet.

Wake up, Ella.

Wake. Up!

The scenery doesn't change.

I tilt my head left and Jonah is still next to me, his arm draped over the back of the couch, his expression creased with affection and concern as he rubs my back and tells me it's okay.

"No," I croak out. "No, no, no. You're not real. I–I'm not—"

"I'm real." Jonah takes me by the shoulders, holding me still while I mentally and physically unravel. Finding my eyes, he forces me to look at him. "Take a deep breath. Breathe, Ella. I'm real. I'm right here. I missed you so fucking much."

My face crumples. "No."

Mom squeezes my forearm, sniffling on the other side of me. "Honey, I'm so sorry I didn't tell you sooner," she chokes out. "I didn't want to get your hopes up if it didn't work out… You'd come such a long way. And then the accident happened, and I was terrified. It's so much to process, and you were barely hanging on. I thought I was getting my baby boy back, only to lose my little girl. It felt like the universe was forcing me to trade."

Her words bleed into fog. "How…how long?"

A pause.

"January," Mom whispers.

January.

It's now April. It's April and my brother has been out of prison—off death row —for three months, and I am just now finding out.

I feel like I might puke. From astoundment, from despair, from heart-sinking disbelief.

"He's been staying with a friend in Charlotte," she continues, voice brittle. "I thought it was for the best, until you were fully healed. We didn't know what the long-term effects of your brain injury would be, or how you would process such a massive shock. I wanted to—"

"How." The world falls out as a demand, not a question. I'm staring at Jonah in a daze. I've dreamt of him so many times, in so many different ways. Brutal and terrifying. Sweet and tender. Fear mulled with memories, pain sweetened by warm nostalgia.

But never like this.

Never real, in the flesh, close enough to touch.

At twenty-two, he looks older. Weathered by time, by barren cell walls, and by God knows what else. A scar ropes along his right cheekbone and dark shadows gray the space beneath his eyes.

I stand.

I find some source of strength and jolt upright on wobbly, stringy legs, my mother's hand shooting out to hold me steady. " How ," I repeat, emotion climbing, brewing, swelling to a peak. "Tell me how. Tell me how this is real. I can't believe it. I don't, I refuse. This can't possibly be happening." Tears fall rapidly, violently.

Jonah's jaw flickers as he stares up at me. A big hand lifts to sweep through thick, coppery hair. Light brown with reddish tints. Full on top, shaved to the skin on the sides and in the back. His nails are rimmed with dirt, and another scar drags across his knuckles, a puckering of pale, raised flesh. "It's a long story," he says.

"I'm sure it is. Tell me everything. Right now." I can't stop crying. My voice sounds ten octaves above normal, squeaking with desperation. "I was there, in that courtroom, when they sentenced you to death ," I screech. "Death, Jonah! People don't just walk off death row."

"Sometimes they do," he murmurs.

"Did you escape?" I tug my hair back with both hands, grateful my mother is still holding on to me. I'm mentally free-falling and can hardly stay standing. "Oh, my God…you broke out."

"What? No. Jesus, Ella."

"Then tell me how it's possible. I can't even begin to comprehend this," I cry, shaking my head, my fingernails burrowing in my scalp.

Mom answers first. "I was working on overturning his sentence for a long time, Ella," she tells me. "This didn't happen overnight. I've been at it from the moment they read off that verdict. All those late nights at the computer, on the phone…that was me, fighting for your brother's freedom."

"You didn't tell me," I breathe out.

Heartbreak shimmers in her eyes. "I couldn't, baby girl. I saw the toll it took on you, both emotionally and mentally. You were angry, confused, lost. I chose to keep this hidden from you because I didn't want you to bear the weight of new disappointment if it didn't work out. It was my way of shielding you from the unpredictable roller coaster that comes with fighting for justice."

I lower myself to the living room floor, collapsing and shaking. "But people aren't just sentenced to death row ," I grit out. "The…the evidence. I even thought you were guilty. I did!" I slam a palm to my chest as my gaze pans to Jonah, the guilt suffocating me. My lungs are waterlogged with it, shrinking with it. "Jonah…you were there, at the scene. You were covered in their blood."

His face is unreadable, eyes skimming across my face. "The DNA evidence was compromised. Mom worked her ass off to prove that," he says. "And there was jury tampering. Erin's fuckhead father had a friend on that jury, put there to skew the verdict. The juror admitted it. He confessed." He swallows, pauses. "The whole trial was a farce, a sham orchestrated to get me convicted. They needed someone to blame, to slap with a guilty verdict, because the entire goddamn world was watching."

My throat constricts. "But the blood…why were you covered in their blood?"

He inhales, looking away briefly before meeting my gaze and steepling his fingers. "Like I've been telling you all along, I tried to help them. Tried to resuscitate them. It wasn't my crime, but I was there after the fact, attempting to save them. I knew it looked incriminating, so I left the scene. I fucked up, yeah, but I didn't deserve a goddamn death sentence for it."

The weight of my doubt crushes me. All these years I had allowed the visuals of that night, the evidence presented, the media frenzy, to direct the narrative. I let suspicion cloud love. All of it overshadowed the boy I grew up with, the man I knew, deep down in my soul.

Our mother chimes in, dabbing a tissue to her eyes. "The lab that was processing the evidence had a contamination incident," she explains. "Some of the samples got mixed up, including Jonah's. Your grandmother helped pay for Dr. Jensen's services—the forensic expert I've been in contact with for the past two years. He was the one who brought it to light. He discovered that the DNA results from the bloody clothes didn't just have anomalies; they were fundamentally flawed."

My heart races, trying to grapple with the enormity of such an oversight. "How was this not caught during the trial?"

Jonah shrugs, his frustration evident. "Inefficient cross-checking, maybe. The prosecution built a strong story and everyone got swept up in it. Erin was my girlfriend, and I was the jealous lover who caught her cheating. No one thought to question the authenticity of the evidence. They trusted the lab results and followed the seeds planted by thirsty prosecutors. But this wasn't just a simple error. Dr. Jensen revealed that the lab had faced similar issues before, but they were brushed under the rug. This time it cost me years of my life."

I'm still shaking my head, still buzzing with incredulity. "And then you had a second trial? How did I not hear about it?"

"I didn't go to trial again. With no witness testimony to put me directly at the scene, the verdict was entirely based around that DNA evidence. The rest was circumstantial and hardly enough for a credible case. The odds of a guilty verdict were fifty-fifty."

I stare at him for a heavy beat. "But…you were there," I breathe out. "Who else was there? Did you see the real killer?"

Jonah doesn't blink, doesn't break eye contact. Harrowing seconds pass before he replies. "No. And it doesn't matter. There's no concrete physical evidence now, no witnesses to corroborate anything. It's not my job to figure out who really did it."

I wasn't there…but I saw him.

He came home, covered head to toe in blood.

They never found the murder weapon, but Mom always kept a gun in the house and still does. The ballistics matched one of them.

Still, it was circumstantial. It was a common pistol—a 9mm firearm. A Glock 19.

His bloody clothes were the smoking gun. If the DNA evidence was no longer credible, they had nothing to go on but assumptions: Jonah's lack of an alibi, his relationship with Erin, and Mom's weapon that she told the packed courtroom was stolen years prior; she'd just never reported it.

Jonah pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. "The prosecutor chose not to retry the case due to the publicity and notoriety it gained," he continues. "Given the errors in the initial trial, they felt that a new trial could further erode the public's trust, especially if there was a chance they might lose. Which there was." Jonah stands from the couch, hovering over me as I sit slumped on the floor, still trembling, still reeling. "Piglet…it's over. I'm a free man," he says softly, crouching down in front of me and pushing a piece of hair off my eyes. "And I'm so fucking glad you woke up. That you're okay. I thought about you and Mom every damn day. I worried, I stressed, I wrote you letters. I missed you both so much."

Tears glimmer in his eyes. Raw pain reflects back at me, filling me with the same sentiment.

He sinks down lower until we're face-to-face.

I'm looking directly into the eyes of my brother. The man I thought was lost forever. The man I slapped with my own guilty verdict.

Jonah.

He's no longer sitting on death row, awaiting a needle to the arm. He's here and he's free.

He came back to me.

I break into pieces, throwing myself at him with the remaining fragments of my strength. He holds me tight, pulling me to his chest as we stumble back against the front of the couch. Strong arms wrap around me, and his face drops to the crook of my neck, his tears falling and dampening my blouse. He smells like cedar and cigars and the stale musk of lost time.

We break together.

Mom slides down from the sofa to join us, slinging her arms around us both. We sit like that for close to an hour, huddled up on the living room floor.

Sobbing, releasing, healing… together .

Mom.

Jonah.

And me.

We're a family again.

***

We sit together by the sun-kissed lake, set only a few feet from the road. My walker rests beside me for support after Jonah drove me over, eager to spend alone time together.

The afternoon was filled with reminiscing and swapping stories over the years: Jonah's tales more harrowing, and mine a mix of sweet and sour. The sweeter moments took over as we ate chicken casserole at the kitchen table—my brother's favorite meal. We made it together and I savored every bite.

It was the best casserole I've ever had.

My orange backpack is settled in my lap as we stare out at the glimmery lake and I fiddle with the key chains.

"I can't believe you still have that thing," Jonah says, flicking stones at the water.

They skim across the surface and my memories bleed together.

Flashes of Jonah trying to teach me to skip stones when I was just a little girl fuse with images of Max's chest flush against my back, his careful arms instructing me as he whispered in my ear.

It's all about the rhythm.

I glance at the backpack decorated in black Sharpie, then up at Jonah. "It's the most precious thing I own," I tell him. "It was the only tangible piece of you I had left."

He nods. "I wrote to you. Did you get my letters?"

Guilt nibbles at my insides, leaving tiny holes. "Yes," I croak out. "I read them thousands of times."

"You never wrote me back." His features crease with disappointment. "I thought you hated me."

"Part of me did," I admit. "But part of me loved you, too. And that's the part of me that hated myself."

"You really thought I did it?" he wonders, voice cracking on the last word.

"Yes." My eyes close tightly, pain skittering through my veins. "I don't know," I mutter. "Some days I couldn't believe you would do that. I couldn't fathom such a thing. You were Jonah. My devoted, heroic big brother who always kept me safe." I drag my finger down the front of my backpack, tracing the Winnie the Pooh design. "But those were the days that hurt too much…to the point where I could hardly function, could barely breathe without choking on the lump of grief. It was easier to imagine that you were where you belonged, instead of a reality in which you were going to be executed in cold blood for a crime you didn't commit."

Jonah leans back on both palms, his hair tangling with the warm breeze as he soaks up my words. It's a perfect sixty-five-degree day, the sun a brilliant yellow, the treetops undulating against a blue sky. He tips his head up and squints at the clouds. "Remember that day we were playing Pooh sticks on the bridge and our sticks kept getting stuck in the weeds?"

Golden memories flicker through my mind as sunlight slants across the lake. "Of course I do. I remember everything from our childhood."

"You were only five or six. I think it was the summer before Dad separated us and took you away from me," he recalls, bitterness seeping into his tone. "Anyway, you started crying. Said it was unfair and the river was cheating."

I snort a laugh through my heartbreak and shake my head. "So dramatic."

"You were." He smiles. "Then you made us walk down to the water's edge and pluck all the sticks out of the brush. You wanted to give them a second chance."

Sighing, I tuck my chin to my chest. "I never thought I'd get a second chance with you," I tell him sadly. "So I started playing Pooh sticks by myself." I look over my shoulder at the bridge standing tall above us, a few yards away. "I'd play them on that bridge over there and I'd pretend you were with me." I consider telling him about Max and about how he gave me a second chance—a second chance at living. A second chance at peace. My eyes water but the words dry out. "I guess I don't need to pretend anymore."

"When you're stronger, we should play," he muses, pulling at some blades of grass and letting them flutter from his fingers. Then he sits up straighter and looks at me, a question in his eyes. The mood shifts, a cold front rushing in. "Tell me more about that night. About the fall."

My heart thunders. "What? Why?"

"I want to know the truth."

"You do know the truth. I tripped and fell. It was stupid."

He studies me, rubbing his fingers over his short goatee. Dubiety shimmers back at me, lingering deep within the green. "Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that. You're savvy when it comes to the outdoors. I taught you everything you need to know. There's no way you'd stumble off a cliff all alone at night."

"Well, I did. It was dark and I was trying to see something over the ledge."

"What were you trying to see?"

My mind races with fictional scenarios, twisting up my tongue. "I–I don't know. A snake or something."

"A snake in December?"

"I don't remember, Jonah. My memories are still hazy." My pulse thrums faster as sweat slicks my brow, trying to give me away.

He frowns. "You said you remembered everything about our childhood, but you can't remember what was so appealing that it made you topple over a thirty-foot cliff?"

Heat blooms on my cheeks. "You think I'm lying?"

"Are you?" Jonah stares at me for a few seconds, then turns to look at the water as a family of ducks coasts by. "I promised you I'd always keep you safe," he tells me, his timbre sounding tortured. "Kills me that I wasn't there. It absolutely slaughters me that you've been by yourself for all these years, and I was one month too late to prevent you from a traumatic fucking brain injury."

I close my eyes, shoving aside the memories. "I haven't been alone. I've had Mom." It's a partial truth—Mom was there, even though she was always so wrapped up in her "work." Work that I now realize was her mission to set Jonah free. Part of me is angry that she kept it from me, but the bigger part of me understands her reasoning. I hadn't made it easy for her to open up—especially about Jonah. I carried my own burdens and, in doing so, unintentionally contributed to the isolation she must have felt in her mission. "Anyway," I continue with a sigh. "I fell. And I'm okay now. Everything is okay."

My brother sighs, swallowing down his fight. It's not the time for it. Maybe it never will be. "I really wish you wrote to me," he says, eyes dipped to the grass. "Would've felt like the sun on my skin, just reading your words, hearing your voice in my mind."

"I'm sorry," I rasp. "I'm sorry I abandoned you. I'm sorry I doubted you, even if it was for my own protection."

He nods slowly, simmering in my answer. "I suppose if that was how you stayed safe and protected, despite it being at my own expense…I'll take it."

My mind swirls with sweet-spun memories of Jonah defending my honor when we were kids, of telling off bullies, of sticking up for me, even to our parents.

Even if it cost him. Groundings, punishments, spankings. He would willingly accept the consequences, no matter what.

As long as I was okay.

"I can't believe you beat up a prison guard," I say, recalling one of his letters.

Jonah shrugs like it was nothing. "The fucker deserved it for running his mouth about you. I'd do it all over again if I had to."

"What was it like?" I probe. "Being on death row?"

His eyes glaze over and a hardness creeps into his expression, jaw clenching, hands fisting the grass between his legs. Then he glances over at me and his features soften, almost like he's staring at a shimmering rising sun. "Painfully lonely." He flicks his eyes to the ground and exhales a long breath. "You know, we have a lot of time to make up for. I want to know everything about you…school, future plans, boys." A smile quirks. "Any love stories in the making?"

I blush when Max's face skips across my mind. "There was a boy," I admit, nibbling my lip. "I'm not sure where we stand right now, but if I introduce you, you can't go all crazy protector on me and beat him up if he tries to hold my hand or something. I'm eighteen now."

Levity bounces between us as Jonah chuckles, looking back over at me. "No promises."

I smile, a peaceful feeling washing over me.

Like I'm home again.

Like things are finally looking up.

Like…maybe everything will be okay.

And when I catch Jonah's eyes once more, I say something I haven't been able to say for years as my favorite storybook tale flashes through my mind. "Pooh Bear?" I murmur.

His gaze lights up. He already knows what comes next.

A smile tips his lips as he holds out his hand for me. "Yeah, Piglet?"

We're in the Hundred Acre Woods again.

Magic kisses the air, innocence fills my heart, and my own bright smile stretches back at him.

I take his hand and everything is right with the world. "Nothing. I just wanted to be sure of you."