CHAPTER 66

LEEWOOD FOLCRUM

I NMATE 82145

I don't know what happened in Visitation that day, but both Leewood and his visitor ... they both came out of those rooms different people than when they walked in.

—Thomas Redd, Lancaster Prison corrections officer

I wasn't expecting another visit from Grant, so when it came, I forced my ass to roll over and get to my feet. Who knew why he was here, but I had something I needed from him, so I didn't waste time or breath, given that I was short on both.

"I need you do something for me." I spit the words out before Redd had exited the room and before Grant had a chance to say anything. "It's important."

"What is it?" He looked wary. He was about to look confused, but I didn't have time for any questions. Today was a bad day, and I needed to get back to my bed so I could lie down and try not to die.

"There are certain people I'm not allowed to contact, but I need you to get a message to someone on the outside for me."

He hunched forward, his forearms digging into the table, one hand cupped over the other. "Who?"

"My daughter. She's changed her name—I don't know what it is, and there's a protective order in place, so what I'm asking you for, it's not technically allowed, but ..." I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. "I don't got much time left."

He slowly sat back, thinking. "You don't know her name?"

"No. She was a minor when her name was changed, so maybe it's hard to find, or maybe it's easy. Maybe she wrote a damn book about what happened." I dragged a hand down the front of my face. "I don't know. But I'd appreciate it if you tried."

"What kind of message do you want me to give her?"

"You'll do it?" It was bullshit, the way my voice cracked on the question, but all I had keeping my blood moving in my veins right now was desperation.

"Depends on the message."

"I'd like her to visit me so I can see her one time before I die. I wanna find out if she has any children. If she had a good life. If she's strung out on drugs or is happy. I want to apologize to her." I sat up straighter. "I have some letters to give her. I wrote her a letter every year on her birthday, for the last twenty-two years. I'll give her those." There was a clog in my throat, and I coughed hard, trying to get it out. "She probably isn't going to want to come, so it's important that you at least give her a specific message." I tapped the glass, looking for his notebook. "It's complicated; you're going to want to write it down."

He hadn't moved, seemed to barely be breathing, and I waited, needing him to look at me, needing him to see how important this was. "Are you listening?"

"I'm listening." He lifted his gaze to me, but I didn't like what I saw there. It was like a snake of confidence was winding through his face, from his eyes to his mouth. He didn't exactly smile, but I knew the look he was wearing. Leverage. This was his leverage, but the truth of that night—it wasn't something I would barter with.

I plowed on. "This last part is important. But you gotta write it down, exactly as I say it."

"I'll remember it." He lifted his chin, telling me to go on.

Maybe he didn't have a pen. From this angle, I couldn't even see if he had his briefcase. Okay, fine. Maybe he'd remember. He had to. "Tell her that if she doesn't contact me or come here, the bunny will start talking about carrots."

The confidence drained from his face. "‘The bunny will start talking about carrots'? That's what you want me to say to her?"

I nodded. "Yes. She'll understand what it means. It's important. Say it exactly like that."

He wiped his hand across his face and over his mouth, looking down at the table and thinking. He was trying to decipher the code, but he would never be able to do that. Not without knowing what it meant.

He lifted his head, and his gaze connected with mine. "So you're holding on to a secret of hers? One you're blackmailing her with?"

"I didn't say that." I frowned, not sure how I'd given that away.

"We're talking about Piketo, right? That's the bunny?"

My heart stopped for a moment in my chest, then began to beat faster.

Piketo, right? That's the bunny?

I know more about you than anyone. He'd said that to me the first time we'd met. I'd dismissed it, but now I tried to think back at who I had mentioned that story to, what article, what letter, where, where, where it might have been documented.

"How do you know that story?" I asked, watching as he dropped his head into his hands. There was no more arrogance on his face, no joy at revealing his hand, and that concerned me more than anything because for once in our dynamic, he knew something I didn't, and fuck that flip in power.

"I know that story," he said slowly, "because my wife told it to my daughter when she was six." He took off his glasses and placed them on the table. "A story that she heard from her father."

A story that she heard from her father.

Piketo was a story I'd made up, the name borrowed from a guy I'd once worked with, the tale created with the purpose of making sure my daughter understood the repercussions that could happen if she ever told people about things that were better kept private.

Things like the videos I used to film of her friends at her sleepovers.

Things like the special showers I would give to those friends.

Things like what those friends would tell her and how she needed to handle that.

No-fucking-one knew about Piketo but Jenny and me. For him to have heard it from his wife ... that only meant one thing, and I shook my head, unwilling to accept that possibility. "No." The word rasped out of me, and I cleared my throat and tried again. "No. Who's your wife?"

He looked at me for a long moment. "You either know or you don't, Lee."

"You're saying that you're married to Jenny?" A cough was coming, and I huffed out a small breath, trying to keep it at bay.

"She doesn't go by that name anymore, but yes. We've been together since she was twenty-one." He didn't sound happy about it. Wasn't lording it over me. He sounded defeated, and hell—any man who married Jenny would be. Together fourteen-some years. Jesus Christ.

"So she sent you here?" I wet my lips. "That's why you're here? She's testing me?"

His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. "No. She doesn't know I'm here. This ..." He gestured between us. "This was about me trying to find answers. Closure. For Lucy and for myself." He tilted his head. "What would she be testing you on?"

I didn't answer that, because there was suddenly a much bigger issue at play. "Wait, you mentioned a daughter. Jenny's a mother?" It was a thought that might fill some grandparents with glee. I had the exact opposite reaction.

"Yes." His mouth clenched. "And no, you can never meet her. We've always told her that her grandparents are dead. There will never be—"

"I don't care about that," I snapped. I didn't want to meet my granddaughter. That was the last thing I needed to have introduced to my system at this stage, with death so close. "How is Jenny with her?"

He snorted. "That's your question? You want to know your daughter's parenting style? She's not chopping Piketo in bits and leaving him on our daughter's doorstep, if that's your concern."

Nausea boiled at the thought of the bunny's light-brown carcass, one I'd had to dispose of. "She told you about that?" So maybe he knew the woman he had married after all. "Did she say why she did it?"

"Did what?"

"Killed the rabbit."

A moment of uncertainty flitted across his face. "She didn't kill the rabbit. You did."

I snorted. "The fuck I did. Who the hell would gut a pet rabbit? I'd trained that thing to come when I called. Jenny killed it. Left it by my work boots like a dog bringing home a prize."

He digested the information, and the fact that he was accepting it was proof that my daughter hadn't been 100 percent successful in hiding her true colors. Finally, he spoke, his words halting, and I wasn't the only one in the room on an emotional roller coaster ride. "Why would she do that?"

"I asked her that, and she smiled. A creepy fucking smile. She said the only way that Piketo was guaranteed not to talk was to kill him." I let out a hard string of coughs. "She was seven when she said that. Seven. "

Horror rolled over his face, and I understood it but also my part in it. I was probably what made Jenny the way she was. If not my parenting, then my genes. Something somewhere had broken in the chain to cause an innocent little baby to become whatever Jenny Folcrum grew into.

"Is that the secret you're protecting for her?"

I shook my head. "I asked about my granddaughter—" My chest seized at the word. Granddaughter. That was something I'd never expected, certainly never expected to discover now, right before I died.

I inhaled deeply, then continued. "—because you have to be careful with Jenny. Very, very careful. She doesn't do well with female competition." I shook my head at the thought. A seven-year-old Jenny had been disturbing. A nine-year-old, scary. A twelve-year-old, deadly.

I had no idea what an adult Jenny would be like. What she was capable of.

"She's our daughter," Grant said tartly. "Not ‘competition.'"

"I didn't view her mother as competition," I said carefully. "Then again, I had a unique relationship with Jenny. An inappropriate one, maybe."

He pinched his eyes shut in frustration, then held up his hands. "What are you saying, Leewood? Stop dancing in circles and just tell me. You're saying that she saw her mother—your wife—as competition? She was, what? Nine?"

I had kept my daughter's secrets for over twenty years, and I couldn't spill them now. Not to him. He'd spent the last two months lying to me. Maybe he wasn't her husband. Maybe he was a guy in a bar whom she'd told a story to once. Maybe I was sitting here, vomiting out information to a con man.

"You're telling me that you're Jenny's husband?" I asked, just to make damn sure.

He flinched, then looked at me as if I were crazy. "Yes," he spat out. "We went through this. Remember?"

"Prove it," I said, my chest aching from just the act of breathing.

"What?"

"You've lied to me for what, two months? Why should I believe you now? Are you even a doctoral student?"

I could see the truth on his face. When had I become stupid enough to fall for shit like that?

"My name is Dr. Timothy Valden. I have a card, if you'd like to see it." He half rose, reaching back to his pants pocket. I waved him off, then let my cuffed wrists rest on the table.

I should have taken his card, if he'd even had one. Researched him. Vetted him. Instead, I'd been more concerned with getting a fucking roast-beef sandwich.

"No, I'm not a doctoral student. I'm a scientist."

"And Jenny's husband?" I asked.

"Yes." He smoothed down the front of his shirt. "Scout's honor."

"Prove it," I repeated.

He sighed. "How do you expect me to do that?"

"You're the smart one here. Think of something."

He glanced at the window that separated us from the COs, thinking. "I have photos in my phone."

A photo of her. If it's real ... I try not to get too excited, but part of me had given up a long time ago at the thought of ever seeing her again. I nodded and tried to keep my features flat.

He fiddled with a thin silver device, swiping and tapping for long enough that I started getting anxious. "Just show me something," I snapped.

"Here." He held the phone up to the glass.

The door to the room opened, and Redd stepped in. "I need to supervise this. No pornographic material, nothing with kids."

"No," Grant protested. "It's just ... I'm just showing him pictures of my family."

Redd stepped forward and stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. I leaned forward and studied the screen.

It was a photo from a soccer game. There were kids in the background, but this was a close-up of just Grant and a woman, smiling for the camera. Her lips were closed, her face reserved, her eyes intelligent and sharp. I didn't recognize the shape of her face or the dark lines of her eyebrows, the dark-red paint on her lips ... but those eyes. I would have known those eyes anywhere. Always watching. Always studying. Always demanding.

It was her. I inhaled, then sat back, trying to process what to do with that information.

Nothing. I should do nothing. I should keep my mouth closed, ask him to deliver the message, and continue to keep her secrets. Why should it matter if he was married to her? Why should it matter if he was also Lucy's brother?

He pressed a button on the side of his phone, then returned it to his pocket. "I told you. It's her."

I stared at him, trying to match the idea that this man ... this dweeb of a man ... was now the one responsible for my daughter. For protecting her. Loving her. Giving her everything she needed. He was also the father of my grandchild. The one who would carry on the Folcrum bloodline, however fucked up it was.

"I'm heading back out, but I'll be watching," Redd said.

I waited until he had left and the door clicked shut. "Your daughter, how old is she?" I asked.

"Eleven. About to be twelve."

"So she's about to have her twelfth birthday," I said. "That one of the reasons why you're here?"

"No." He shook his head. "But I have put myself in your shoes. More lately than ever. Trying to understand how you could do it. I know ..." He tapped his chest. "I know how much I love my daughter. How I would do anything to protect her. And I don't know how—"

"We aren't so different," I interrupted him. "You and I. You would do anything to protect your daughter? You love your daughter? So did I. So do I." I needed to stop talking. Right now. Before I saw myself in this man, before I tried to get him to understand. It didn't matter if he knew why I'd done what I did.

"Jenny ..." I sighed and tried to think of something I could say, some sort of warning I could give. "When Jenny killed that bunny, she didn't feel anything about it. When her mother died, when the girls died at that party ... She's empty inside. Like she missed the step in the process when that thing inside us, the thing that tells us what's right and what's wrong ... like she didn't get that piece."

"And you did?"

"Yeah," I said. "I did. I never touched my daughter—or let her touch me—in certain ways. But I wasn't like that with all young girls. And I feel bad about those things. Real bad. Believe me or don't. But whatever you think of me, you got to know that the woman you're sleeping with each night, she's worse. She's worse and she's smart. She's so fucking smart," I said hoarsely. "So just ... remember that. And protect that little girl you got. But don't coddle her too much. Don't give her too much attention, at least not around Jenny. That's just my bit of fatherly advice to you." I stood before I said anything else. "Goodbye, Grant."

He didn't move. He didn't stand. He didn't even say anything, not until Redd was walking in and unlocking me from the floor ring. "Was there anything true in the letter, Lee?" he called out.

I watched as Redd undid the clip, freeing my ankles to move. "Yeah," I said. "The last part. The last girl. That one was me."

"You mean Jenny. You're saying that you did kill—or tried to kill—Jenny. You're admitting to it."

"I am." I nodded at him. "Remember what I said. All of it. But don't tell her that I said it. You're the fucking Piketo now."