Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
On the inside cover of the maroon, leather-bound journal, scrawled in lazy cursive, black ink inscribes: Property of James M. Dewhurst. My jaw slackens as I stare at it, unblinking, waiting for my eyes to deceive me, to prove this isn’t what I think it is.
“This can’t be real,” I mutter, running my fingers along the name, forearm grazing Charlie’s. But under my soft touch, the shape of the letters come alive. This isn’t some prank left by previous ghost hunters or true crime fans.
Charlie fans the pages. Nearly all of them are filled. “Holy shit.”
“The cologne.” I glance around us. “I wonder if that was James. Like he didn’t want us to leave this cell just yet. It must’ve . . . this must be his cell.”
A pang of sorrow pendulums in my stomach as I take in the space, this time with a different eye. This—the metal cots stacked two high, sink, toilet, a single shelf—was all he had. For years and years of his life.
Charlie swipes a hand over his mouth as he takes a deep breath. “This is real, Win.”
“I know.” I ignore the implication in his voice that everything else that’s happened today hasn’t been real.
An ache builds in my hip and I brace my weight on the edge of the cot to stand and relieve the strain.
Biting my lip, I ask, “We should read it, right? I mean, that’s why James wanted us to find it, right? ”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Charlie stands too, holding his hand out for the camera and light. I pass them over.
“Is it wrong? To pry into a dead man’s private thoughts?”
Charlie snorts and the light snaps back on the camera. “Wasn’t that your whole point in coming here?”
“We came here to contact ghosts. This is different. This is . . .”
“It’s evidence,” Charlie says quietly, finishing my sentence.
I nod. “We could capture the most authentic ghost interaction ever seen on camera, and somewhere in the world, people like you would still doubt the validity of it. But a journal . . . James’s own words .
. .People can’t argue with that. If he somehow knows the truth of what happened to Edith .
. . This journal could have real consequences. ”
“Like what?”
I lean back against the grimy wall, huffing a breath as I pull my leg into passé, toes pointed and drawn to my left knee, as a barrage of possibilities swim through my mind.
“Maybe he admits he did it and we crush Edith’s family, who are clinging to this story that he’s innocent.
” River, too. “Or maybe he is innocent, and his surviving family—if he has any—is entitled to some kind of compensation for his wrongful imprisonment. Or maybe for Edith’s family, if this journal proves they didn’t catch the real killer. ”
Charlie pans the camera across the journal, flipping it open to show the inscribed name.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Win. I’m not sure the prison-industrial complex is used to owning up to its mistakes.
” He must catch the way my brow tightens and my shoulders fall, because he gently tacks on, “But I think giving families answers is just as noble a cause. Even if nothing bigger comes of it.” His gaze drops to the journal. “So . . . you want to do the honors?”
Today isn’t turning out how I expected it to at all.
I thought it would be a fun romp of an episode, filmed with my brother and his usual antics.
Not a reunion with my estranged husband, culminating in a raunchy, out-of-pocket makeout session, and discovering a journal which could actually help us solve this decades-old crime.
This is so much bigger than our web series and the extra money that trickles in from it.
This is peoples’ real lives potentially being impacted by whatever we’re about to uncover.
River just may kill me for what I’m about to do.
But if I made the correct choice two years ago, if I’ve been doing right by my brother ever since, if all my sacrifices are worth it, then I think he’ll forgive me.
“Cut the camera.” I jut my chin toward it.
Charlie’s head cants. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” I pick up the journal. “Let’s read this thing.”
Entry No. 1
It has only been four weeks and I fear I am already losing myself in this place. I bartered six smokes with J.R. for this journal. Three more for three BIC Crystals from R.Z.. I hope they last me. I intend to write a few lines a day. Must keep my mind.
Entry No. 17
I cannot stop thinking about my darling Edith. How dreadful it must be to die. Every night when I lie on my cot, unable to sleep as I listen to the rats and the noisy pipes, I wish to wake up a brave enough man to tell the truth of what happened to her.
Entry No. 25
Don’t think the guards like me much. They think I am strange. Too quiet. Edie always understood my quiet.
As I read out loud, skipping around entries in the journal, sitting next to Charlie on the metal bed frame, he clears his throat to interrupt. “So they were lovers?”
I set my thumb on the page to hold my place in the mess of sloppy cursive, each line split in half in an attempt to save space. “Edith saved their letters. James wrote she understood him. It’s seeming more plausible.”
Charlie removes his glasses to clean them with the hem of his T-shirt, nodding toward the journal in my hands. “Keep going.”
Entry No. 35
A stronger man would not have run from the love of a woman like Edith Page. Perhaps I deserve to rot in a place like this. If not for a crime I didn’t commit, for the cowardice I let cloud my judgement.
Entry No. 38
One day A.P. will get what is coming to him, by the grace of God.
Entry No. 49
I picked up a Bible to pass time today and was reminded of Exodus 20:14—Thou shalt not commit adultery. It is sinful to have intimate relations outside of the holy covenant of marriage. Perhaps that is why I am locked up here—to atone.
What I felt for Edie never felt like sin. Though perhaps Eve would say the same about the apple.
My confidence in James’s guilt waffles. I bite my lip and turn to Charlie. “Do you think Edith’s husband caught her with James? Was he the one who did this?”
His brows lift. “It’s always the husband, isn’t it?”
Something akin to humor passes between us, an awkward acknowledgment of what he still is to me. I turn away, pinching the bridge of my nose. “It is always the husband. So you think they would have investigated him. And yet they still ended up pinning James for the crime.”
Charlie grimaces. “What are the odds you think James ever woke up ‘a brave enough man to tell the truth’ of what happened?”
I sigh deeply. “Considering he never got out of this place, pretty damn low.”
I flip through a few more pages, studying the sheer amount of words this man wrote during his time here.
Most of it is meaningless drivel—the terrible quality of the food, falling ill, conflict with inmates he denotes by initials only.
It would take hours to comb through every single entry.
With the weight of impossibility, my shoulders slump.
Moving my hand to close the journal, Charlie pauses my wrist, fingers curling around to my pulse point.
“Wait. Just a few more pages. I just—” He shakes his head like a dog freeing itself of water after a swim, trying to shake out whatever thought is bothering him. “I think you should keep going.”
I turn down the corners of my smirk. “Another intuitive feeling, Charlie?”
He scoffs. “Whatever you call it. Just keep going.”
When I glance down at the journal, I feel it too—a sure warmth spreading through my chest, expanding inside me, a quiet encouragement stroking against my ribs.
We found this artifact for a reason. The Knowing, deep inside me, has never steered me wrong.
I pry the pages back open, right where we left off.
My heart stops at what I read.
Entry No. 54
Perhaps it was the fever, or the slow loss of my mind in this place, but last night I wrote a letter.
I detailed everything about what happened the night my sweet Edie met God.
It is a risk, as bold as I may ever take, but I have asked to speak with the warden.
I plan to pass along this confession, this detailed account of the truth, and ask for true justice to be served. I only hope my family forgives me.
The shock rises in me like a cresting wave, crashing and breaking against all my doubts. River’s hope was well-placed after all.
“Charlie,” I say slowly. “I think . . . I think he may really be innocent.”
Entry No. 55
Warden Rhymes filed my letter away in one of his many cabinets. Said he would “consider” what I shared. I fear some men are so flawed, they lose interest in the truth.
Blood raging through my arteries, I flip through the next few pages in search of a follow-up—anything to denote the warden at least attempted to reach out to the proper authorities about James’s letter.
But there’s nothing. My lip curls back as I flip through more pages.
It’s useless, anyway. We both know how James’s story ends.
“I don’t get it,” I mutter. “He shared the story of what happened and . . . what? The warden did nothing?”
“Are you really so surprised?” Charlie asks flatly. He taps the page. “James says so right there. Not all men are interested in the truth.”
My torso twists, facing his. “Do you think . . . is it completely unhinged of me to wonder if maybe . . . maybe some evidence of James’s confession is still around here somewhere? Like maybe that letter got left behind in the move, or . . .”
Pity loops around the edges of his smile, downturning it as he looks at me. “Unhinged? No. Recklessly optimistic? Maybe.” He shrugs. “But what do we have to lose by checking?”
“Your storm?”
He pulls out his phone, checks his radar. “Still at least an hour away.”
“You’re in this now,” I deduce, cocking my head.
He stands, one eye squinting as his mouth lifts unevenly. “I’ve been in it since I offered to help. But yeah, I guess I do better with more . . . tangible things.”
“I’ll take it.” His large hand turns over, extending itself to me. I grin at it and grip it, letting him help me up. Sharp, hot lightning radiates from my hip as I put weight on it, the pain swirling down my leg, and I wince.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” I grit out. “Bad hip.”
His lips part. For some reason, his surprise—or maybe his remembrance—sends a flare down my spine.
“Still?”
“Mhmm.” I massage the pain away as I tuck the journal to my side and attempt a subject change. “You think we can hunt down the warden’s office in a place this big in under two hours?”
His eyes narrow, irises sweeping upward, as he digs through whatever’s circulating his head. “I think it’s across the yard. I found a blueprint of this place online a few days ago. Should’ve saved it, but the watch tower seemed simple enough.”
Laughter peels from my chest as my head tips backward. “Oh my god. How did I know you had a map to this place?”
Like it’s a contagious disease, a laugh leaks from his chest too as he watches me keenly, like he’s trying to commit this sound to memory—the way my lips curl with the movement.
His voice drops, tipping on the edge of far too intimate, as he says, “Maybe because I’ve never been a mystery to you, Win. ”
Our eyes lock and the size of the compact cell shrinks even tighter, stealing every last molecule of oxygen from the air around me.
A breath snags in my throat, my lower lip falling open against my will, as the ice beneath his heavy lids shoots right down my spine, freezing me in place.
He’s right—he’s never been a mystery to me.
Generously, he never held anything back when it came to me. I wish I could say the same.
His gaze falls to my mouth and my heart cinches, laced tight like a pointe shoe tied around an ankle, as my core tightens.
For as hasty as it was, kissing him in the dining hall satiated a deep-seated need inside me that had gone untouched since I packed my bag and left.
Every inch of my skin charges, reacting to his proximity, like we’re opposing ends of two magnets, helplessly drawn to each other, and without thinking, I lean a little closer.
Mangled and low, my stomach growls. The noise slices right through our spell, and my cheeks flame.
“Adrenaline always makes me hungry,” I mumble, looking down at his shoes.
“I know,” he murmurs. “I have some granola bars in my backpack.” Charlie waves me out of the cell. “C’mon. I’ll share.”