CHAPTER 20 SHAWN—MAIL-CALL AND THE CART
Thursday again, commissary rolling through, and this time Shawn's name gets called.
Small thing. Shouldn't matter as much as it does. But he's up off the bunk fast, taking the bag from the CO like it's something precious instead of ramen and a couple stamps, and Jorge watches him do it with something warm working at the corner of his mouth.
"Your books finally got something on them?" Jorge asks.
"Lawyer set something up. Some fund for indigent defendants, I guess. Not much. Enough." Shawn digs through the bag like a kid checking a stocking. "First time I've bought my own ramen in here instead of eating yours."
"Don't get used to it. Still eating mine half the time either way."
"Generous."
"Don't push it."
Shawn grins, settles back onto the bunk with his own bag for once, and for a minute the cell feels almost ordinary, almost like two guys with nothing bigger hanging over either of them.
The cart comes an hour later, same trustee, same tired push down the tier. Shawn's first to the bars again, out of habit now more than hope, and finds a battered paperback wedged between two others he doesn't want.
"Anything good?" Jorge asks.
"Cop thriller. Cover's missing half the title." Shawn flips it open, skims a page. "Guy's investigating his own partner's murder. Standard stuff."
"You gonna read it?"
"Beats staring at the ceiling."
He settles in with it, quiet for a stretch, Jorge going back to whatever he's got open, the cell falling into the kind of easy silence that doesn't need filling anymore.
Mail call breaks it. Guard works down the tier with a stack of envelopes, calling names, and Jorge's is one of them, which still surprises him a little every time.
He recognizes the handwriting before he opens it.
Ruben's widow, Marisol—no, not widow, Jorge corrects himself every time and still trips on it, brother's girlfriend, not wife, never got the chance to be one.
Close enough to family that the distinction stopped mattering a long time before it stopped being technically true.
Jorge reads it twice, quiet, jaw tight in a way Shawn's learned to read as something other than anger now.
"Everything okay?"
"Shop's got dust an inch thick on everything.
She's been checking on it, feeding the cat that hangs around out back, nothing more than that.
" Jorge folds the letter carefully, same precision he gives everything.
"Says she hopes I'm doing alright in here.
Says Rubén would've wanted somebody watching my back. "
"She sounds like good people."
"She is." Jorge sets the letter aside, something distant in his face for a moment before he pulls himself back. "Been thinking about writing back. Haven't figured out what to say that isn't either a lie or too much truth."
"Middle ground exists."
"Does it."
"You found it with me."
Jorge looks at him at that, something quiet passing between them that doesn't need more words attached to it.
The afternoon rolls on, ordinary in a way that feels almost stolen given everything else sitting on the horizon.
Shawn reads his paperback. Jorge writes half a letter, crosses out most of it, starts again.
Somewhere down the tier, a radio plays something with too much bass for the speaker it's coming out of, same as it has every day since Shawn got here, background noise so constant neither one of them hears it anymore.
It's the kind of day that would mean nothing, most weeks. Just a Thursday. Commissary, cart, mail, ordinary silence built up out of small ordinary things.
Neither of them knows yet how much they're going to want this exact day back.
The block goes on alert two hours later—different tier, different problem, nothing that touches them directly. But it's enough to remind Jorge, sharp and sudden, that nothing about where they are gets to stay ordinary for long.
Six days later, everything changes.