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“I tried. I asked for turkey. They don’t think I deserve turkey.”
“Did they say that?” Sha
Her mom raised her face. “They don’t have to. I can tell. They don’t like me here. They don’t like me at all.”
“Mom,” she said, doing her very best to sound comforting and caring, because that was all she could do. “Why would you say that?”
“Because.” Her mom clamped her lips shut, as if she was refusing to speak.
“Because why?”
“Because.”
Sha
“Because of what happened,” her mom snapped out, like a wild dog.
“Because of why you’re here?” she asked gently, as if she were talking to a child who’d been caught skipping school.
Her mom shook her head, whipping it back and forth so rapidly she was a cartoon character in fast forward. “No. Not that. Not that at all. It’s because of the—” She stopped talking and jammed her fist in her mouth, biting hard on her knuckles.
Sha
Her mom crunched, digging her teeth into the flesh of her hand.
“You’re going to draw blood. Stop!”
The door swung open.
“Enough, Prince,” the corrections officer barked.
Dora dropped her fist from her mouth, her shoulders sagging, her body going limp. The big woman held up her hand and raised her index finger. “One more shot, Prince. One more shot.”
“Okay,” her mom muttered.
Sha
“Nothing,” her mom mumbled. “Just nothing.”
Sha
Dora’s eyes lit up. They sparkled with a mad kind of glee as she began rattling off couples, and plot lines, and twists and turns. Sha
After fifteen minutes of mindless chatter about TV and the meatloaf served last night, her mom asked about Sha
Her mom sat up straight, like a puppeteer had just pulled up her marionette strings. “Is it?”
Sha
“I don’t know anything about Jerry,” she said, using the shooter’s first name.
“What did you see your lawyer about then?” Sha
Her mom’s chest rose and fell. She breathed heavily. Then, faster. A lone, silent tear streaked from her eye. “It’s about Luke.”
Sha
“What about Luke?” she asked carefully. She wasn’t wild about the man, not by any stretch, but there was a big difference between being a cheater and being a killer. There was no evidence to show her mother’s lover was involved in any way, except loving the wrong person at the wrong time. “The police cleared him, Mom. In just two days he was cleared of any knowledge.”
“I know. He didn’t do it. He’s not that kind of man. He’s a gentleman and a saint. 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 missing from it proved her i
Sha
Her mom peered to the door, making sure it was shut, then back at Sha
“You’re in for life. He’s going to be waiting a long time.”
“Not if they find the real killer.”
“If they were going to, it would have happened already. It’s been eighteen years,” she said, reminding her mother that time was not on her side. She didn’t bother to bring up the powerful evidence that had put her there in the first place, including the shooter’s own testimony that Dora Prince had hired him. That didn’t need to be said, because it didn’t change this interaction.
“Oh, it’ll happen. They’ll realize.”
Sha
Her mom leaned across the table, coming as close to Sha
Sha
Her mom nodded her head against the table as she sobbed. “Yes. Because it proves something. And lawyers need proof. So I told my lawyer.”
“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 come back.”
“And that changes everything?”
“Yes. It changes everything for me. Everything.” Her mom cried more, a river of tears rolling down the plastic as Sha
Through it all, one fact remained starkly clear.
The case was closed. Her mother’s fate was 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 land, and she’d done it all to herself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Skittles? Salt and vinegar chips? Twizzlers?”