Chapter 10

I incorporated William's letters into my life the same way a person might make room for a new hobby, except I wasn't learning how to cha-cha or how to identify birds. Instead, I was getting to know a serial killer.

I checked my mailbox when I left for work in the morning and looked forward to arriving home so that I could check it again at night. On the weekends, I made excuses to go downstairs to see if anything had arrived. For the first time in my life, my laundry was always clean, because I had to walk past the mailboxes on the way to the washing machines. I used to consider what it was like to live without the constant pressures of a cell phone, an existence that I'd experienced briefly in my childhood, and my obsession with my mailbox taught me that people had always been confined, just in different ways.

Can I tell you a secret?His second letter began. Yes, I wanted nothing more than to know the things ensconced in the deepest, darkest parts of him.

I never wanted to be a lawyer.A disappointment. Secrets were supposed to be about love or murder, not career aspirations.

All of the men in the Thompson family are lawyers. My father, my uncles, and their father before them. From a young age, my brother Bentley was eager to join that lineage. I was determined to be different. Growing up, if I wanted to make my father mad, I would threaten to not attend law school, to become an actor or journalist or some other career that he despised. In the end, I chose to become a lawyer because it seemed like the practical choice. I thought that maybe I would be able to do some good in the world. I was wrong. I wish I'd been brave enough to be my own person.

I suppose you can say that I am desperate for human contact, as you suggested in your last letter. I didn't like hanging out with lawyers when I was one of them and I like it even less now that I'm a defendant. In some ways, everything is about me and in others, it's like I'm not even in the room.

When my parents come to visit me, my mother cries the entire time and complains to the officers about the conditions in the jail like I'm supposed to be contained in some sort of luxury prison. My father is convinced that I can somehow find my way out of this with the right work ethic. I have a hard time talking to them. The thing that you understand that they never will is that I deserve this. I have earned every spore of mold on the bread, the ill-fitting clothes, the cough that I developed the first night they brought me here that's never gone away.

You're right that I shouldn't contact you. Not because this contact is some threat to your life, but rather because it is an unearned distraction from the life that I have created for myself. You mentioned the difficulty you have in denying yourself small luxuries and that's what this contact is to me, a small luxury. For a long time, I lived a life of excess that I didn't deserve and I kept waiting for the universe to take it from me. There's something comforting about karma even if I'm the one that's the recipient of its ire. For what it's worth, I think you should buy yourself the candles without guilt.

It sounds like people take you for granted, Hannah. Just know that will never be true of me. I know we don't really know each other yet, but I treasure everything you have to say.

Sincerely,

William

I spent an entire morning at work writing him back. I told him about how I'd been thinking about going to graduate school for years, but I worried that I was too old. I think I missed my chance to create a new life for myself, I wrote. Besides, I don't even know what I really want. I wrote about Carole's outfits, how I wished my office would revert to a four-day workweek. Who could I be if I had more time? I almost forgot that I was confiding in an accused serial killer and not an ordinary man on a dating app. Almost, but not quite.

I hope the jury puts you away forever, I ended my letter.

Sincerely,

Hannah

He started his third letter by declaring I've never told anyone this before, and then launching into a depiction of his childhood.

Even though my mother stayed at home with us, my brother and I were raised by a series of nannies. It was understood that my mother's job was to make sure that the house looked good, that we were dressed the right way, attended the right schools. Everything else, the grimy parts of childhood, was left to the nannies.

My brother and I have a complicated relationship. We are polar opposites in a multitude of senses, not the least of which are our political beliefs. In other ways though, we're very close. We used to fight a lot when we were children. On more than one occasion, we hurt each other in ways that required hospital visits. A few black eyes, a broken arm, that sort of thing. I don't think either of us ever intended for it to go that far, but it was easy for things to get out of hand.

I've always been the black sheep. My brother did everything that my parents expected of him. He got married young, to a woman like our mother. They met while he was in law school and she was still an undergraduate. They have two children whom I love and don't know how to relate to. I thought I would understand once I had my own children, something that has become an impossibility. I suppose Bentley's children will take up the Thompson family legacy and become lawyers when they're old enough.

My father presents himself as being one way in public and another in private. I've heard people describe him as kind on more than one occasion, which is an adjective that I struggle to connect to him. He was tough on Bentley and me, the kind of father who thinks if children aren't spanked, then they'll become spoiled. Arguably, we were spoiled despite the spanking. Money doesn't inoculate people from destroying their children.

We were expected to excel in everything and when we didn't, we were punished. It was a disappointment when I didn't make the varsity football team in high school when Bentley was the starting quarterback. They didn't listen when I told them that I didn't want to play football to begin with. It's what everyone in our family does, my father said. Sometimes when people are under too much pressure, they start to crack.

I realized by that point that he wasn't simply going to hand over a confession. He expressed remorse without admitting to a particular crime, referenced hurting his brother badly enough that he needed medical care, but only as an accident. Our correspondence was more like a television show than a movie, every letter building upon the last.

I described my relationship with my own parents.

My parents love a version of me that doesn't exist. I've never confided in them, told them about the boys that I liked or my hopes and dreams for the future. They think that I could be great if only I believed in myself. They don't understand that believing in myself isn't enough to get a better job or a mortgage. They want to know why I'm not married but recognize that it's insensitive to ask.

It all sounded so trite compared to William's childhood. My parents never spanked; they didn't believe in spanking children. They merely had expectations of me that were out of line with who I was, in part because I kept the lesser parts of myself secret from them. However, I wasn't wholly convinced that this lack of violence was the difference between William and me, why he turned out to be a serial killer and I was a person who sometimes skipped going to the gym when I told myself that I would go. Such correlations were too easy, too simple, and William was anything but that.

"What's up with you?" Meghan asked when we finally got together for happy hour. "You look different. I can't tell what it is."

She peered at my face as though a closer examination would reveal a haircut or whiter teeth.

"I'm writing William Thompson," I told her in a hushed tone.

"Who is William Thompson?" she asked, and it felt like she'd asked me what was air. It hadn't occurred to me that William wasn't in the forefront of everyone's brain the way that he was in mine. Much of my communication was with other members of the forum, who were as equally invested in William and the outcome of the trial as I was. It was as though Meghan and I existed in two different worlds.

Meghan and I used to be best friends,I told William. And then she got a boyfriend and forgot about me.

"He's the man accused of murdering Anna Leigh. You know, the serial killer."

Meghan made a face of interested disgust.

"Oh my god, you're writing him?" she said.

If there's any relief in being locked up, it's that people reveal their true selves to me in all sorts of ways,William said in his response.

"Yes. I mean, I've only written him a couple of times. It's not like we're pen pals or anything. I didn't expect him to write back. I really didn't. I guess he's lonely in jail."

Is the food as bad as people say?I asked him.

It's worse,he replied.

"That's so fucked up," Meghan said. "It's kind of cool though, right? You're communicating with a serial killer. It's like you're talking to Ted Bundy."

"Ted Bundy killed at least thirty women," I said quickly, trying to put some distance between William and Ted.

I have to admit, you're nothing like I thought you would be,I wrote.

Likewise,he said.

"Does it matter?" Meghan asked. "How many women does a man have to kill before he becomes irredeemable?"

"I think it's irredeemable to kill anyone. I'm not writing him to redeem him. If anything, I'm searching for the truth. You know, to get justice for the victims," I said.

"Just don't become one of those women. You know, like what's her face that showed up at Bundy's trial." She made the face again when she said the words "those women," like they were marked.

"Carole Ann Boone? I'm not her. I'm just writing him. Carole Ann Boone had sex with Ted while he was locked up and had his baby. I don't think I could have sex in a jail and if I did, I would definitely make him use a condom," I said.

I thought about William's perp walk. The way his suit hugged his figure. In a different life, where he wasn't a murderer and I wasn't several states away, I would be attracted to William.

The server brought another round of drinks to the table, interrupting our conversation. I licked the salt off the rim of the glass before eagerly sucking down my second margarita.

Meghan avoided my gaze when she spoke next.

"I've been meaning to tell you," she said. There was a pit in my stomach before she even finished her statement. "I'm engaged."

It was then that I noticed the sparkling ring on her finger. I should've been suspicious when she invited me out for drinks. It had been weeks since I last saw her, our ritual happy hour long since dissolved. It wasn't that she "missed me," as she wrote in the text; it was that she was engaged and thought I would be weird about it.

"Congratulations," I said, faking a smile.

"I wanted to tell you before I posted about it online."

"Yeah, of course."

I sucked up too much liquid in my straw and began to cough.

"Do you have a date set?" I asked when my throat cleared.

"We're thinking December."

"A winter wedding."

"Yes."

"I'm so happy for you."

I wish I wasn't jealous when good things happen to other people. I can't help myself. Why can't those things happen for me? Sometimes I wonder if I am actually self-sabotaging the way that my parents claim.

"Thanks," Meghan said, and then hesitated like she was going to say something else, but remained silent.

We each paid our separate bills.

"It was so good to see you," she said.

"Yeah, you too."

Meghan turned to me before she left.

"Don't fall in love with a serial killer or anything," she joked.

I laughed. It sounded fake.

"Hahahaha. I won't."

I went home and drunkenly composed a letter to William. My handwriting was so sloppy that I worried he wouldn't be able to read my words.

She's supposed to be my best friend and yet, it feels like she only hangs out with me out of pity.

I wondered if Meghan understood what her engagement reduced me to: a person with only a serial killer to reach out to for comfort.