So, all things considered, I was doing okay. I wasn’t making enemies, and I was finding plenty of stuff to pass the time.
But, man, I was fucking lonely.
It was easy to be lonely in prison. And I wasn’t talking about finding someone to chat with during mealtimes or while working whatever job you were assigned to. No, that part was a piece of cake, and if we were talking about casual acquaintances, I had plenty of those, and all of them were just like me. Good-hearted guys who had ended up in shitty situations.
But what I was talking about was, when everyone else was having visitors or weekly phone conversations or receiving regular letters and packages in the mail, I had none. And that honestly blew my mind a little. To know that these guys—and I mean dudes convicted of worse crimes than me—had parents, wives, kids, and friends out there who loved them and cared for them after everything they’d done and I had no one. Not a single fucking person. And that sucked. A lot.
So, one day, out of desperation, I took up writing letters to the one person I could think of who I’d never wronged. The only person who I’d truly saved.
I wrote letters to a girl named Rain. A girl with the prettiest, softest brown hair I’d ever seen.
I knew, even when I’d started writing them, that it was stupid. I also knew I’d never send them and she’d never read them. But it was cathartic, in a way, to write to this person I’d built up around a girl I had known for all of fifteen minutes. And while I knew what had happened to me—up to this point in my life anyway—I often wondered what had happened to her after I dropped her off at her house.
She’d be twenty-four now.
Where had life taken her after that night? Had she heeded my warning to stay away from those assholes? Had she gotten the hell out of that town and run far away, just as I’d always dreamed of doing?
Every week, I filled my letters with those questions, my confessions, and the things that had been happening inside the prison walls. The initial struggles. The acceptance. The hard work I put into being the good, decent person I’d always insisted I was. They served as a diary of sorts, and it was better to get it all out and down on the paper than keep it locked inside. Then, I tucked them away beneath my mattress, for nobody to read, ready to face another week of loneliness.
Until, one week, five years into my incarceration, Mom showed up.
***
Mopping the bathroom floor was dirty, disgusting labor, and I was sure it was understandable when I said I didn’t care much for it. But it was quiet work—monotonous and relaxing—and it gave me a lot of time to think. To remember a life I’d once had and fantasize about the one I probably would never have at all.
I thought about Gramma and Grampa. How disappointed they might’ve been to see where I’d been living all these years and the things I’d done to put me there. But sometimes, I thought, You know what? Maybe they wouldn’t be all that disappointed after all. Maybe they’d even be proud of me. Not for the things I’d done—of course not—but for what I’d done since I had gotten there.
I thought about Billy’s mom and the grief and pain she lived with every day. The broken heart I’d single-handedly stuffed inside her aching chest. Every now and then, I considered the possibility that, Hey, maybe she doesn’t hate me as much today as she did yesterday, and that pipe dream filled me with the smallest amount of hope. But the reality was, I knew she wouldn’t ever care about me again. Not until the day I was also dead.
But mostly, I thought about Billy. Where he had gone wrong and how he was also to blame for the choices he’d made in his life.
And, no, I couldn’t say I was mad at him, even given the situation I was in because—let’s be real—I would’ve ended up behind bars eventually, whether or not he had died. But I was sad. Sad he wasn’t still around. Sad that my friend was gone. Sad that he’d swallowed that damn pill, laced with enough fentanyl to kill three men. Sad that there hadn’t been anything I could do to save him.
I was sad about Billy a lot, and as I scrubbed the bathroom floor, I tried to imagine what he’d look like now. Six years older than twenty-one, maybe with a little more hair on his face and a little more bulk on his body.
Probably not, I thought as I stared into the murky water in the bucket. He was always a scrawny fuck.
“Soldier.”
I looked up to see Harry, the only prison guard who called me by my first name, standing in the doorway. I pushed Billy out of my mind and smiled at the older man in the silver-framed glasses I liked to consider my friend.
“Hey, Harry. How’s it going?”
He returned the smile and walked casually into the bathroom, his hands stuffed into his pants pockets. “Ah, can’t complain. The wife and I went to visit our daughter over the weekend. It was nice to see her. Been a little while.”
“Good for you guys,” I replied, leaning my weight against the mop handle.
“Yeah, we had a good time.” He nodded, meeting my gaze. His eyes twinkled, and he reminded me of my grandfather. There was just something about him. Familiar and comfortable. “Hey, so, listen, you have a visitor today.”
My smile was quick to turn into a frown. “A visitor?”
The words felt strange in my mouth. Nobody visited me. I hadn’t seen a person from my life outside of this place since my sentencing, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine who’d wanna see me now after all this time.
Harry nodded with the same suspicion in his eyes, seeming to read my mind. “Yeah. Someone named Diane.”
I dropped my gaze to the bucket and held on tightly to the handle of the mop. “Holy shit. That’s my mom.”
“I know.” He reached to lay a hand on my shoulder, the way Grampa used to. “You don’t have to see her if you don’t want. I’ll tell them you’re not interested.”
Harry was a good guy. Always looking out for me.
But I shook my head. “No, I’m good. I’ll see what she wants.”
The curiosity would kill me if I didn’t.
I left the mop and bucket in the bathroom and headed through the halls to the visitor center. I’d never been in there before, but I knew exactly where it was, and when I crossed the threshold into a crowded room, guarded by several officers at every entrance, I spotted her right away.
Mom.
She was thinner than I remembered, and her hair was as dry as straw, piled on top of her head in a sloppy bun. Her eyes were fixed on the table in front of her, her hands fidgeting like crazy. She was nervous or doped up—hell, probably both—and I wasn’t sure that I cared anymore to know what she wanted. Maybe I’d be better off leaving her stranded until she got the hint and left.
Honestly, I probably would be.
But I approached anyway.
Slowly, I walked toward her, trying to think of something to say, when she looked up at me, startled and looking as though she’d seen a ghost.
From her perspective, that was probably exactly what it was like.
“Soldier?”
“Mom.”
She dropped her gaze to my hands and said, “Are you allowed to be in here without handcuffs?”
I stepped over the bench across from her and sat, staring at her with narrowed eyes. “Do you think I need to be in cuffs?”