Chapter Ten
S he carried his letter in her purse, so it was always with her and when the guilt and shame started to creep in, she pulled it out to read again. The paper was soft now, and the words faded, but it didn’t matter. She’d already memorized the exact phrases that had been most comforting and where she could find them on the page.
Are you alright?
He’d asked about her first, how she was doing, how she was feeling. It made her feel warm and safe, knowing she mattered to him more than any rule she might have broken. He didn’t care if her judgment had lapsed or mistakes had been made, he only cared about her.
This was not your fault.
He’d told her that so clearly, so emphatically, that the sick feeling in her chest had begun to abate for the first time since the party. He knew what had happened, the real ugly truth of it and not the glossed over version that she’d told James, and he didn’t blame her.
I can’t believe that asshole actually tried to blame you. I’d like to knock his teeth down his throat and blame him for not wearing a helmet. I need you to know that what he said was bullshit.
She had laughed out loud at that, a trembling hand pressed to her mouth. She didn’t feel bad about Gabriel’s anger toward James. It wasn’t like Gabriel could actually hurt him. He just wanted her to know that he’d protect her, keep her safe, and he wanted to make her laugh, like he always did.
Don’t ever let someone make you feel like another person’s sins are your fault, especially not some self-righteous, Bible-thumping bastard. He doesn’t deserve you if he treats you that way.
People that hide their cruelty behind a mask of piety are even more terrible than the ones that are openly evil. You don’t see them coming until it’s too late, and even when they hurt you, they blame you for it.
She’d considered that, worried over what he meant, until she’d given in to the urge to ask him.
Did someone hurt you that way? Did they blame you, too?
She wasn’t sure he’d answer, it was such an intimate and personal thing to ask, but he surprised her.
They hurt me and other people I cared about, and no one believed any of us.
She felt less alone knowing he’d experienced the same kind of hurt, and she wondered again what had led to him killing his father. She was so certain about his pain, that he hadn’t really been the spoiled brat the media had depicted, but she didn’t want to press too hard.
She had written only
I’m so sorry.
And
I believe you.
and then, thinking of Mrs. Newberry and Kennedy’s parents
I know so many people of faith that have good hearts and love God, but I also know people who pretend to have faith as an excuse to hurt others. You expect kindness and love, but they spew hatred and judgment. You deserved better than whatever happened to you.
She wasn’t sure what impulse had overtaken her, but she’d scrawled her phone number hastily on the bottom of the letter and put it in the outgoing mail before she could change her mind. She wasn’t sure if he’d call and there was nothing she could do but wait.
“You look jumpy,” Lilly sat down beside her as the other members of the Bible group roamed around the room nibbling on snacks and talking about the plans for the Christmas toy drive.
“I am,” Mia admitted with a smile. “I haven’t felt like myself the past few weeks.”
“Have you told your dad about changing your major yet?”
Mia could hear the hesitant worry in her voice, and she shook her head as she picked at a piece of lint on her skirt. “I’m sorry, I know it bothers you, keeping my secrets.”
“I’m worried and I don’t think I’m the only one that’s noticed you seem off lately. You aren’t really talking to anyone, and you haven’t been out with James at all. I think he’s starting to wonder if you’re still interested.”
“I think I’m trying to figure out if I’m still interested.”
“Really?” Lilly’s face crinkled in concern. “Did the dates not go well?”
Mia shrugged and shot her a small, reassuring smile. “I think he’s only interested in me because he thinks I would make a good pastor’s wife. He doesn’t seem to care much about who I am or what I want out of life.”
“Oh.”
She sounded so disappointed that Mia bumped her shoulder affectionately. “I want what you have with Bryce. Someone that knows me and loves what I am, not what he wants me to be.”
That soothed the worry from Lilly’s brow. “I really did get lucky with Bryce, didn’t I?”
“You truly did,” Mia muttered, but her attention was on Mrs. Newberry as she made the rounds with her usual gossip. Heads were turning too often in their direction, and Mia had the unpleasant feeling that they were the subject of the night’s discussions. “Why is she always causing problems?” Mia asked, jerking her chin toward Mrs. Newberry.
Lilly turned to look and rolled her eyes. “She’s not happy about my new role in the group. I guess she thinks she should’ve been next in line to take over after Mrs. Mitchell, even though all she’s done is complain about every single project.”
“Bitch,” Mia mumbled beneath her breath, and her cheeks turned hot when Lilly sucked in a breath and looked at her in horror.
“Mia,” she hissed. “You can’t say that in here! What’s … How did … Where did you even pick up a cursing habit?”
Mia shrugged. “Probably Gabriel,” she admitted. “He swears a lot in his letters.”
“Seriously? You’re supposed to be encouraging him with your good habits, not picking up his sinful ones. I can’t believe you’re still talking to him and letting him be a bad influence on you. Is there something going on with the two of you?”
“No,” Mia shook her head sharply. She suspected that Lilly’s objection had less to do with worrying about her vocabulary and more to do with not liking Gabriel. “He’s never getting out of prison, remember? We’re just friends.”
The look Lilly gave her was skeptical, but she let the subject drop.
It took a few back-and-forth letters before he called her for the first time because it was harder to set up phone calls with an inmate than she’d anticipated. It wasn’t as simple as picking up the phone and dialing her number.
She’d had to register her number on a website for the Department of Corrections before he was allowed to call her and then he’d had to put money in a special account with an outside provider to cover the costs since cell phones don’t receive collect calls and her house didn’t have a landline. In fact, she didn’t know anyone whose house still had a landline, and they were both angry at the inefficient system long before they’d worked out all the problems.
In the end, despite his insecurities and all the obstacles, he told her he would call between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. He couldn’t give her an exact time because inmates couldn’t use the phones during lockdowns or emergencies, so she pretended to have a stomachache and skipped class, instead sitting beside her phone nibbling at her fingernails. There was no way she was going to miss his call after all of the effort they had put into setting it up.
He didn’t keep her waiting too long, and her phone screen lit up, displaying an unfamiliar number, at 10:17 that morning.
She swallowed hard, and her hands shook as she answered it. “Hello?”
There was a brief silence so intense she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Her body felt weightless and numb and her fingertips cold as she waited for him to answer.
“Hi, is this … is this Mia?”
Everything inside of her slid sideways at the sound of his voice. The images she’d had of him in her mind, the ones she’d carried since she’d looked up his trial, shattered. He’d been a kid, long and lanky and awkward, younger than her and fragile for all the brutality of his crime. That was how she’d pictured him in her mind when she wrote to him, when she read his letters, when she thought of him and how he spent his days.
This … this was not the voice of a child, and the deep, rumbling timbre of her name on his lips shook her to her core. She hadn’t paid much attention when he’d mentioned his birthday and said he’d turned twenty-eight, but now it was painfully obvious that he was a grown man nearing thirty.
She pressed her thighs together against an unfamiliar sensation and cleared her throat. “Yes, it is. It’s nice to finally hear your voice. I feel like I already know you so well.”
He chuckled and she bit down hard on her lip, terrified that he could hear the way her breath trembled on the exhale. “I feel the same way. I’m not interrupting your classes, am I?”
“I stayed home today. Tummy ache.”
“Mia …” His voice dropped, got impossibly lower and her body was suddenly hot all over, a flush rising under her skin. She bit harder on her lip and tried to focus. He was her friend and nothing more.
It was obvious he didn’t approve of her skipping classes for his sake. They both knew the importance of her education, but she wasn’t going to apologize. “I’m not going to skip class every time, but this was important, and I didn’t have a specific time to expect your call. I’ll send you my class schedule, so you’ll know when I’m free for next time.”
“Next time? You mean you want me to call you again?”
She scowled at the walls full of his artwork. “Of course, I do. Do you not want to call me again?”
“I do! It’s just …” He paused and when he continued his words carried the weight of years of rejection. “No one else wants to talk to me.”
“I want to talk to you.” She was careful to keep her tears from carrying in her voice, knew he wouldn’t want her to feel sorry for him. “In fact, I’m hurt that you could think so little of me and just for that I’m going to eat your birthday cupcake next year, too.”
He exhaled softly, and she could sense the tension as it flowed out of him. “That is cruel and unusual punishment.”
“It really is, but you know you deserve it. Is it expensive?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly.
“The cupcake?”
She sighed. “No, calling me? Is it expensive?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t really matter. The one thing my mother does for me is put a monthly deposit into my general account. I use it to buy stuff from the commissary, but I have enough to spend on phone calls if I want to.”
“How often are you allowed to call?”
“I get twenty minutes per call, but a max of 300 minutes a month so that’s … uh, about three a week.”
“That’s good,” she said. Her foot tapped nervously on the floor. “I think I’d like to hear your voice three times a week.”
“I’d like to hear yours, too, but what about James? Or your dad?”
“What about them?”
“Will they be mad? I know you said there was something between you and James—”
“There isn’t anymore,” she said quickly, having decided right that moment that she wouldn’t be going out with him again.
“There isn’t?” he sounded … surprised maybe, or relieved. She wished she could see his face, the look in his eyes, so she could know for sure. “Why not?”
She huffed out an impatient breath. “He just … he doesn’t make me feel . I don’t think I make him feel anything, either. That’s important, right? For a relationship?”
“Yeah, I guess you should love them.”
“Yes, definitely.” She agreed, foot tapping away as she hedged. “But you should feel … other stuff. Intimate stuff?”
He paused and she was afraid she’d said the wrong thing, but then, “You mean, should you want to fuck the person you’re in a relationship with? Is that what you’re asking?”
She laughed, embarrassed and almost hysterical. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m asking.”
“I’ve been in here for a long time but, yeah, I know that’s definitely something you should want. Do you …” He coughed, hesitated, “Do you not want to fuck James?”
She shook her head before she remembered that he couldn’t see her. “No,” she said quickly. “At least, I don’t think I do. He’s nice to look at but …”
“But he doesn’t turn you on.”
“I’ve never really been turned on, so I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.” He made a strangled noise on the other end of the line and coughed quickly to cover it up. “Gabriel, are you okay? I’m sorry I’m even telling you this, I just don’t know what I’m doing at all and I needed someone who wouldn’t think I was making a big mistake by breaking it off with him.”
“I don’t think that,” he promised.
“Thank you.” She glanced at the clock on her phone. Not much time left for today. “I’ll send you my schedule,” she reminded him. “But maybe you could call Saturday next time? I’m free that day.”
“Yeah, I’ll call Saturday.”
“Gabriel?”
“Hmm?”
“I know you probably can’t but … is there any way you can take pictures? Of you, I mean? I’d like to know what you look like these days.”
“It’s not unusual for friends and family to want pictures and I can have some taken, but on one condition.”
She frowned and sat up straighter on the bed, prepared to fight him for that photo. “What’s the condition?”
“You send me another one of you.”
She relaxed back against the pillows with a smile. “Oh, I can do that .”
He kept his promise to call her Saturday and the picture came the following week. She studied it carefully before tucking it out of sight in her bedside drawer, away from the prying eyes of any visitors. The man in the photo was nothing like she’d expected, he was older and far more attractive than anything in her imagination. The skinny teen she’d seen in the videos had filled out into a large man that had grown into his big ears and prominent nose. His skin was still pale, and his hair was still black, now curling softly down to the collar of a white prison jumpsuit. His posture was awkward, unsure, and she knew this was the first time in a painfully long time that anyone had cared enough to ask him what he looked like.
His own mother didn’t know what her son looked like as a man and now Mia couldn’t stop thinking about it.
She nibbled her lip, trying to concentrate on her homework at the dining room table, but she had reread the same page three times, unable to keep her traitorous thoughts from drifting back to the image and how big Gabriel’s hands were, or the thickness of his neck and thighs, the plump pink pout of his lips.
“Hey.”
She jumped, startled and embarrassed, and pasted a bright smile on her face as she turned to face James. He was still handsome, but her pulse remained steady as she looked at him.
“Hey, haven’t seen you at the house for a while.”
He sat down in the chair beside her and picked up her book to examine the cover. “Yeah, well, things seemed a little awkward between us. I thought maybe you might like some space.”
“That was very kind of you.”
“You seemed upset,” he said, pushing gently for an explanation that she wasn’t certain she wanted to give, “like maybe you were angry.”
“I was,” she admitted, knowing it wouldn’t do her any good to pretend otherwise.
“Why?” He looked genuinely shocked.
“You blamed me for something that wasn’t my fault. The sin those boys committed was their own … and your answer was bullshit.”
He leaned back, frowning at her uncharacteristically combative tone and vulgar language. “Look, what I said …”
“Was wrong.” She leaned over and took her book from his hands, returning it to the pile as he bristled defensively.
“You know, Lilly told me about that guy you’ve been writing to. The murderer. She’s worried about you and maybe she was right to be. I didn’t want to have to go to your father, but your behavior lately ...”
“Please, do tell my father. I’m sure he’ll think it’s a fascinating story since he’s been well aware of my participation in that particular church program.”
She made no attempt to conceal her animosity as she gathered her things. “You don’t actually know me, and I don’t need your protection. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m expecting a phone call.”
She swept from the room without a backward glance, but her teeth were still clenched with rage when she answered Gabriel on the first ring, blurting out the whole confrontation as he listened quietly.
“How dare Lilly tell him about you? This is none of his business!”
“Maybe she thinks I’m competition,” he teased.
“Who said you aren’t?” she asked, words tumbling out faster than her inhibitions could stop them.
“What?”
“I just …” She cleared her throat nervously. “Forget it.”
His voice on the other end of the line sounded strangled. “Mia—”
“We’re almost out of time,” she interrupted. She shouldn’t have said it, shouldn’t have brought it up. “I’ll talk to you next week?”
“ Mia ,” he repeated. “You can’t just say something like that and pretend it never happened.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted. She chewed absently on her thumbnail and watched another minute slip by on her bedside clock.
“Can you write it down? Send it to me?”
She closed her eyes, tipped her head back. Her words had been impulsive, but they hadn’t been untrue and maybe it was time they both stopped pretending otherwise. “Yeah, I can do that.”