CHAPTER 6

LEEWOOD FOLCRUM

I NMATE 82145

I was here the day they brought him in. It was a big deal because the child killers always had to be kept out of general pop, otherwise they get roughed up too much. And everyone already knew who he was, even on the inside. So, uh, yeah. Twenty-three years I've known the guy. He ain't bad. Wasn't doing too well, this last year.

—Carlos Zurate, Lancaster Prison corrections officer

Prison loves rules. It's like the fucking walls were built from them. Nest inside those walls long enough, the rules started to feel like they mattered. Like they were the bones of this place, keeping everything standing. Like without them, your organs wouldn't stay where they should. You'd try to step forward and just fall apart. I'd gotten so used to the rules, it was like I needed them. Not just the big house's, but my own. The longer I was in here, the more rules I created for myself.

Don't let nobody in my cell.

Don't make friends. Period.

Finish a fight if it's brought to you, but don't bring that shit to anyone else.

Don't appeal. I'm in here, so I'm in here.

Don't talk about what happened on December 6. Ever.

Only read and write letters on Sundays.

I had a bunch more rules, pages of them, but that's the major ones. The ones I reminded myself of the most, especially if I was tempted to break them. The Sunday one, that's the one I came closest to breaking, because who really gave a shit if I opened up a piece of mail on Wednesday instead of waiting around till the end of the week?

I cared. I cared because I didn't have much to look forward to, and I learned a while ago that anticipation and hope were half of the enjoyment of life.

Maybe this was the week that she'd write to me.

Maybe that letter I was just handed was from her.

Maybe I was just a couple of days away from having some of my questions answered.

In here, the maybe s could kill you, but they could also keep you alive.

By the time Sunday hit, four letters waited in a neat stack at the top-left corner of my desk. When I got back from lunch—fried rice, beans, and corn bread—I went to my desk.

Everything in my cell was designed to keep me safe, including the hard plastic stool that matched the wall-mounted desk. They both looked like something out of a kid's playroom. I sat on the stool and flipped through the envelopes, taking my time and savoring the handwriting on the outside of each one.

I always took the letters face down, letting my hope get a chance to live until this time each week.

Back when I was free, I used to buy a lotto ticket every Thursday and wouldn't check it until three days after the drawing for the same reason. In the anticipation, anything was possible.

The hope was what got you through the agony.

Three of the four letters were from regulars. I glanced over those, recognizing the familiar items in the top-left corner. Some of my pen pals used a discreet address and didn't put their names on the bottom of their letters. Others vomited out all their personal details and locations, like they hoped I escaped and showed up at their door, either to screw them or kill them. Maybe both.

I held the third envelope for a moment. No sender name and only a PO box for their address. Anonymous in one way, but I knew exactly who this neat handwriting belonged to, and I knew this box number by heart.

It was close by. Within an hour or two's drive, which was interesting but not surprising.

I placed it to one side and opened up the envelope from Tiffany.

Hi babe.

Sit down, because you aren't going to believe what happened to me at work this week. We had a contest to see who could sell the most of the egg roll appetizer and no, I didn't win BUT this one guy came in and ordered nine of them. Nine! It was Deb's table, of course. Whore.

I have been thinking about what you said, about me taking some community college classes, but I just don't know. I mean, I feel like only losers go to community college. It's not like back when you were young. Like, if I put on my socials that I was a student there, my followers would freak. Plus, I'm really gaining traction on my videos. I wish you could see them. It's so stupid that they won't let you online. You would be so popular. Keep thinking about my visit, okay?

Oh, and here's a riddle for you. What can you put in a bucket to make it weigh less?

Got it? I bet you do. You're so smart.

Big hugs from your girl,

Tiffany

PS Last week's riddle answer was: You don't have to worry about it, concrete floors are very hard to crack! Ha! I thought that one was really funny.

Tiffany was one of the ones hoping for a screw. She was an idiot, but an entertaining one who had stuck around for more than a year. I put her letter to the side. I'd write her back later that afternoon, after I figured out her riddle, which she had probably found on the internet. I didn't give a shit. The questions kept me entertained, at least for a few minutes, sometimes longer. Hell, one I had thought about for days.

The second envelope was from Darby, another regular. Her letters were always full of detailed descriptions of what she wanted to do to me sexually and what she wanted me to do to her. I squeezed the envelope, gauging the thickness, and was pleased to feel that it contained a photo. Darby wasn't my body type—too hard and muscular—but at this point in my life, anything looked good.

Darby was all talk. She'd never come to visit, and if I ever got out of this place, she'd likely run in the opposite direction. It didn't matter. I wasn't getting out, and she enjoyed her fantasies. I'd gotten pretty good at writing stuff back, so I'd write something after my afternoon tug.

I pushed it to the side, unopened, and picked up the third envelope. A small smile crossed my lips. It'd been over a month since he last wrote, and while this was likely just like all his others, it still always gave me a jolt of energy—some adrenaline before the battle.

To the man who took away my world,

Today would be Lucy's 35th birthday. I should be driving to her house, where we would gather in the backyard and I'd cook ribs on her grill and we'd sip mojitos and spiked lemonade while her kids ran across the lawn and crawled into her lap. Instead, she is rotting in the ground while I sit alone and write to you. I have no nieces and nephews, no extended family to spend holidays with, no sister to ask advice of.

Like you, I have long stretches of time to think about what happened 23 years ago. Unlike you, I did nothing to deserve this.

Speaking of birthdays, I'll be 40 this year. Six years older than you when you did it. I've been looking into psychological breaks and it seems that the same kaleidoscope of events that cause midlife crises can also manifest new inclinations in someone's psyche. At this point, I know you better than just about anyone else in the world. I believe that what you share with me is sincere. You and I, we made a contract a long time ago. A contract written in blood, and while you are a despicable human in many facets, you are an honorable man in others.

In a letter that you wrote to me six years ago, you said that your first true Valentine was a girl named Kendra. Remember her? Of course you do. I've gone through your high school yearbook and there are no Kendras, not in the three years beneath you. There is, however, a Kendra Platt who was nine years underneath you. It took a while for me to find her, and then to track down through the records that her sister was a girl two years beneath you. There's a photo of you and Courtney, her sister, your arm around her at a football game when you were a senior at Longville High. You were a fall baby, so you were seventeen when you hung out with Courtney. Was it all under the guise of getting close to her eight-year-old sister?

As I've said before, I'm not here to judge you—though I certainly do. I just need to understand what recipe led to the death of my sister. I need to know what happened in those hours of the party. Did she suffer or if it was quick? Did she die first or last?

I don't understand why you won't share these things with me. I am a man in pain, and time isn't healing anything.

Please help me. Please. I'm begging you.

While you may have been cruel one night two decades ago, I don't think you're a cruel man at heart. Am I wrong?

He never signed the letters or put a name in the return portion of the envelope. It didn't matter. I'd figured out from the start who he was. The brother of the blonde one.

I spent some time with the letter. I read it a couple of times, weighing some words more than others and trying to hear his voice in my head. He's not anything special—just an ordinary man trying to understand an unordinary thing. I can relate to that. But I don't get the soft spot I have for him. Maybe it's because I never had a son, and when he first started writing me letters, he was still a teenager, trying to figure himself out. The two of us have carried on a twenty-three-year-long relationship, courtesy of the US Postal Service.

In the beginning, his letters were all hate and cussing. Sometimes the ink was blurred, like he'd cried while writing. He'd called me just about every name in the book and talked about killing himself, which was why I wrote him back instead of just throwing them away.

I didn't mind people hating me. Part of me enjoyed the venom in those letters. I deserved it all and could relate to their emotion. I hated myself a lot more than any of them, and if this were a state with the death penalty, I'd have volunteered to get the needle two decades ago.

An honorable man would tell him what really happened that night, but I kinda saw it as mercy, keeping it to myself. Nobody should know the gory details of their sister's death.

And ... maybe I didn't tell him 'cause I was worried he'd stop writing me once he got what he was looking for.

But while those were both good reasons for keeping my trap shut, there was only one real reason I didn't confess every horrible and beautiful moment of that night.

Because of her. It all was because of her.