Chapter Fifty-Eight
When the guard informs Mary Beth that she has a visitor, she bolts upright in her bunk, heart racing.
It’s Ceto. It has to be her. She’s come to make amends, or to tell Mary Beth that she’s going to turn herself in, or—
Wait, no. It can’t be her.
You can’t just drop by to visit an inmate unless it’s visiting hours, and even then, there are procedures.
Requests, forms, approvals . . .
Even if procedures were followed, it’s never going to be Ceto. She wouldn’t dare show her face here, even if she wanted to see Mary Beth. Which she doesn’t.
Not after that last night, at home in Syracuse, back in the spring.
The guard brandishes handcuffs. “Let’s go, Winterfield. Your visitor doesn’t want to wait all day.”
“Who is it?”
“Detective Sergeant Midge Kennedy with the Mulberry Bay PD.”
“What if I don’t approve the visit? Isn’t that my right?”
“Not when it’s law enforcement with the warden’s approval.”
“Shouldn’t my attorney be present if I’m going to talk to her?”
“She says she’s an old friend, not here to interrogate you. This isn’t about your case. But if you want to invoke—”
“No. I’ll see her.”
The guard cuffs her and escorts her to a visitation booth.
Midge is seated on the other side of the glass partition. Mary Beth refuses to make eye contact as she settles in the chair and the guard removes her cuffs.
Her heart is pounding. She’s seen no one from the outside world in ten weeks. There’s been no break in the monotony of incarcerated life. And now . . .
Midge Kennedy? Here out of the goodness of her heart?
The guard steps back.
At last, Mary Beth looks at her visitor, somehow expecting the freckle-faced tomboy who was always hanging around Caroline when they were kids.
The woman opposite her has reddish-orange strands of hair poking from beneath her cap and freckles on her face. There are laugh lines around her blue eyes and her mouth, though in this grim setting, she’s somber.
This isn’t the first time they’ve seen each other in middle age.
But on that fateful June night, they were in the dark woods at Haven Cliff, and Midge wasn’t wearing her uniform as she is now.
Midge, Talia, and Kelly were simply her sister’s old friends, ganging up on her with accusations and assumptions, blaming her for what happened to Caroline, for Gordy’s death.
Gordy. Dead.
Blindsided by that news, she reacted—overreacted—badly.
“Hi, Mary Beth,” Midge says.
“Hey, old friend.” She gestures over her shoulder, toward the guard. “He said that’s why you’re here? Not, you know, on official business?”
Midge answers the question with one of her own.
“I know you didn’t do it. So who did?”