The Letter Keeper

by Charles Martin

  “I’ve always liked Adriana.”

  Casey looked to Summer, who said, “Always wished my mom had named me Rachael.”

  Casey wrote down both names. She glanced up and then quickly back down at the ground. “How about a boy’s name. Or . . . two boys’ names?”

  I had a feeling there was more going on here than simply fishing for names. “I’ve always thought Michael and Gabriel were good names.”

  Summer nodded.

  Casey seemed to like those as she scribbled quickly.

  “Now just give me two names. Doesn’t matter if they’re boy or girl.”

  Summer spoke first. “Bonnie . . . and Peter.”

  Casey wrote again. Nodding as she did. Turning to go, she said, “Thanks.”

  My voice stopped her. “That all you need?”

  She turned slowly, made eye contact, and shook her head. “I need a priest.”

  I stood. “Okay.”

  She returned to the door. A moment passed while her mouth tried to form the words. Shame covered her like a shadow. “I was forced to have three abortions. And . . . maybe two more, but they’re kind of foggy. Doctors told me”—she thumbed over her shoulder—“I can’t ever have kids. So . . .” Her eyes darted. “I’d like to bury the five I have.”

  I took a step toward her. “Say when.”

  She swallowed and her voice trembled when she spoke. “Tomorrow morning?”

  Sunup found us standing on the mountain just shy of the Eagle’s Nest on a small, flat, grassy area where the first rays of daylight touched the mountain. At Casey’s request, I’d dug a hole. A difficult task in the rocky ground. Summer stood with her arms wrapped around Casey. As did Angel and Ellie. Gunner sat staring at all of us. Bones stood alongside me. I climbed out of the hole and motioned to Casey, who stood holding a shoe box in her hands. “Would you like to say a few words?”

  She glanced at the sun, then down into the hole, and finally at the box, speaking to faces only she could see. “If I were you, I’d have a lot of questions about me. I mean . . . I don’t know what kind of mom I would’ve made.” A forced chuckle followed by wiping her nose on the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “Probably not very good. A kid raising kids, but . . . I wanted to speak to you so you could hear your mother’s voice, and I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”

  Holding the box, her hands began to tremble. “I also wanted, if you’ll let me, to tell you your names. At least the names I would have given you if I had been in my right mind. A baby should have a name. Even if . . .” She paused and rubbed her hand along the top of the box. “So, Adriana, Michael, Gabriel, Bonnie, and . . .” She shot a glance at me. “Bishop.” A pause. “I think they’re good names. I like them. At least this way the other angels will know what to call you.” She gritted her teeth and held back the building wave. “I’m looking forward to meeting you one day. To holding you, if you’ll let me. And if I could just say one more thing, I hope when that day comes . . . that you won’t hate me . . . as much as I hate me. Maybe we can all sit together a little while with the sun on our faces and the breeze in our hair and you could tell me about you and your hopes and your dreams and . . . if that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  Casey swallowed and tilted her head sideways. She’d held it off as long as she could, but the wave crashed down over her shoulders, forcing her to her knees and drawing a sound up and out of her stomach. Out of her womb. The sound was long, loud, and less human than more. When finished, she rested her head on the box, touching the lid tenderly. Staring to the borders of this world, Casey whispered, “I wrote you each a letter. And . . .” We sat in silence as the breeze washed over us and the sun warmed our faces. “I’d like to know the color of your eyes . . . and what your hand feels like when I hold it in mine.”

  I helped her place the box in the hole while Angel and Ellie helped her cover it with dirt—one small handful at a time. With each measure, the box disappeared. When gone completely, she rested on her knees, eyes closed, staring out across Colorado. Slowly, she lifted her arms. Olympus pressing up on the world. Arms extended, she released the spirits of her children to her Father in heaven. “Please take care of them, rock them to sleep, love them, tuck them in at night . . . and . . . when I knock on the door . . .” Casey shook her head, staring back through memory and pain. She placed her hand on her heart, then she made a fist and pounded it several times. “Please don’t remember the me I used to be. Remember the me that I am.”

  Gunner stared at each of us, walking in circles, whining slightly. Bones stood stoic, tears dripping off his chin.

  “Father,” I said softly. “Please receive these children.” I gently placed my hand on Casey’s head. “All of them.”

  Bones disappeared behind a boulder only to return carrying something covered in a sheet. He set it on the ground next to Casey, lifted the sheet, and revealed a cage holding five white doves. Bones nodded, and Casey slid the latch and opened the door. One by one, they landed on the small platform, cooing, uncertain at the possibility of their own freedom. Eventually they launched themselves out across the expanse. The last leapt from the cage to Casey’s shoulder, skimmed in a circle, cooed, and launched airborne.

  Below us they circled, then climbed, rising and falling in acrobatic wonder, only to return in a final flyby and disappear above the Eagle’s Nest.

  Chapter 24

  Two months passed.

  Casey and her beautiful story lit up the world. Climbed charts. Won awards. Got picked by actors and their reading clubs. Movie rights were optioned. Her picture covered a few of the magazines at checkout counters. And whenever her picture appeared, Clay was never far behind. White hair. Sunglasses. Suit. In a beautiful exchange, Clay was becoming the father she never had. Often the pictures showed them holding hands. Or his arm around her. And not in some creepy way suggesting impropriety, but in a beautiful manner. A manner that said, I cherish this woman.

  Given sales, the publisher released a royalty payment before it was due. Nearly seven figures. Casey took one look at the check and shook her head. “This would keep me high the rest of my life.”

  “Yep.”

  She handed it to me. “Take it.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I am too.”

  “You won’t take it?”

  “Not in ten lifetimes.”

  She turned to Bones, but he cut her off. “Don’t look at me.”

  She frowned. “You two know I cannot be trusted with this.”

  Clay spoke up. “I can. We’ll go dancing.”

  She laughed and sat in Clay’s lap. “Thank you.” I watched her with no small amount of joy, for it was here, for the first time, that I knew she’d make it. The fact that she’d just sat in a man’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck meant she’d started to forgive men. What’s more, she was blooming in front of our eyes.

  Chapter 25

  The Colorado night was cold as we camped above eleven thousand feet and beneath a blanket of ten trillion stars. We huddled around the campfire wrapped in blankets, puffer jackets, and each other. While Bones sipped wine, some twenty-year-old product of the vine from a valley in France, the rest of us cooked s’mores. It’s been said you can tell a lot about a person by the books on their shelves, and I would agree. I also think you can tell a lot about a person by how they cook a s’more.

  Ellie stabbed two marshmallows onto the end of her cooker, shoved them into the center of the heat just inches from the coals, set them on fire, waved the stick like a torch, and then when the whole mess was good and sooty, she slapped it on top of half a Hershey’s bar sandwiched between two cinnamon graham crackers. And shoved it in her mouth. All at once. When she bit down, marshmallow goo oozed out the corners of her mouth.

  She could not have been happier.

  Angel worked a bit differently. She slow-cooked hers, baking the marshmallow to a golden, crispy brown, and then gently set it between the cr
ackers with just the right amount of chocolate. She then pressed gently, squeezing out the mallow and licking the edges clean. When she’d mopped up the ooze, she ate the s’more one quarter at a time.

  Ellie wore nearly as much as she ate. Her fingers were covered in both marshmallow and chocolate, while Angel’s were spotless.

  Casey worked at a different pace. Ellie could eat four s’mores in the time it took Casey to cook one. Casey held her marshmallows at a safe distance. Warming them more than cooking them. Every five minutes or so, she’d inch them closer to the fire. Given the temperature, she’d be lucky to cook them by tomorrow. Having never really cooked the mallows, she set them on top of a piece of chocolate and half a cracker, then nibbled on it.

  Casey ate as if she were afraid of hurting the marshmallows.

  I felt like I was watching three people approach a swimming pool. Ellie dove in the deep end. Angel walked elegantly down the stairs. And Casey circled it, dipping her toe and testing the water.

  It was a complex look into both the depth of their pain and the magnitude of their joy.

  I added wood, fed Gunner a hot dog off the fire, and then that beautiful thing happened that happens around all campfires. Stories were told. Ellie began by asking Bones about his life. How he got his start. His history with me. At one point, she asked, “You have any siblings?”

  He nodded. “I had a brother.”

  I did not know this. I sat up. “You have a brother?”

  “Had.”

  Ellie, not picking up on his body language, which suggested he didn’t want to talk about his brother, asked, “You keep in touch?”

  He stared into the fire and sipped his wine. “He died some years back.”

  Angel asked her mom about Broadway and her favorite shows. Who she’d starred with. To which Summer responded, “I was never really the star.” Her favorite role? Longest-running show? Boyfriends? Favorite things about New York City?

  Finally, they got to me. They wanted to know about my younger life, growing up, where I met Bones, where I learned to write, how many times I’d been shot and shot at. My favorite food. Favorite place I’ve ever been.

  Casey listened with rapt attention. Hanging on every word. A fact not lost on Summer. It struck me as I watched the firelight dance off her face that all of this was new for her. Conversations with family around a campfire. Normal conversations where people share laughter and authenticity, and don’t steal or demand from one another. Where the joy of a moment wasn’t simply a disguise to mask the coming deception of the next hour or week or month.

  Casey had cut her hair Audrey Hepburn short. The peroxide white of months ago was replaced by a natural sandy blond. The black circles and black eyeliner had given way to no makeup at all. And anorexia had been supplanted by beautiful curves. Casey’s external transformation was one of the most complete I’d ever seen. Much of which could be credited to Angel and Ellie.

  Finally, Ellie turned her twenty questions on Casey. “What’s your first memory?”

  The process of writing her book had opened many a locked door in the basement of her mind. To my surprise, the answers were easy in coming. “I was maybe two or three, and I remember something hot being spilled on me. Oatmeal or grits or something. And my pajamas were those awful one-piece, footed, synthetic things they don’t sell anymore. The kind that melted near heat. When the heat fell on me, I reacted. I jumped or fell back or something and touched the heat source. Melting the pajamas to me. My foster parents didn’t realize it until a few days later. They didn’t change me often.” She held up the back side of her right forearm. “When they did, they just ripped it off . . . like you would a Band-Aid.” She nodded. “I remember that.”

  “Favorite vacation?”

  She looked around her and smiled. “This one.”

  Ellie waved her off. “No, really.”

  Casey looked down, up at me, then back at Ellie. She was trying to be careful with her answer. “I’ve never been on one.”

  We knew a lot of Casey’s story from her book. We’d all read it. But there were gaps. Obvious sequences of time purposefully left out. “What about Taos? That seemed like a good home.”

  Casey waved her head back and forth, again weighing the answer. “My sixth foster parents were wealthy. Lived in what felt like a castle. Couldn’t have kids so they opened their doors to me, and while the wife doted on me and treated me like a doll, the husband . . .” Casey stared off into the Milky Way. “Didn’t. At night, after the wife—I think her name was Margaret or Margo or something like that—had gone to sleep, he’d take me to the basement.” She fell quiet a few minutes. “I did not like that basement.” More silence. “When I was about eleven, I was snooping around his medicine cabinet, looking for something, anything, to take away my pain, and I found this medicine he’d hidden in this little compartment. I used to wonder how his wife stayed asleep through . . . everything, but then I searched the name on the computer and I didn’t have to wonder anymore.”

  Ellie put her arm around Casey, saying nothing. Casey tried to make us feel better. “I don’t think about it much. It was a long time ago.”

  Leaning on my shoulder, tucked with me under a blanket, Summer had her fists clenched and her heart was pounding.

  Casey’s life was one ginormous bucket of pain. And while we were doing everything we knew to help, I wondered if it was enough. Was her pain deeper than our love?

  Ellie tried to shift direction. “You have any memory of any man treating you kindly?”

  She never took her eyes off the fire and nodded.

  “Who?”

  Casey lifted her right hand and pointed with two fingers. Her middle finger at Bones, and her index finger at me.

  An hour later, the carb-crash occurred, and the girls piled into their tent. Wasn’t long and they were wrapped like cocoons in their down bags, sleeping—or so I thought.

  Somewhere after 2 a.m., I sat next to the fire, listening to the noises coming from the girls’ tent. The sounds of someone dreaming bad dreams. Muted screams. Some not so muted. Torment and torture housed within the human soul. I pulled aside the tent door and saw both Ellie and Angel lying on either side of Casey. Both were awake. Casey lay drenched in sweat. Eyes racing back and forth beneath their lids.

  I whispered, “She do that often?”

  Angel brushed the hair out of Casey’s face. “Every night.”

  Ellie added, “This one’s not too bad.”

  “Anything make it better?”

  Angel shrugged. “Not sleeping.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Really powerful drugs.”

  I returned to the fire and found Bones bathed in firelight, his Sig and two spare magazines resting in a chest holster. I didn’t need to ask him if he was expecting trouble. He was. Always. And the sounds coming from that tent told us it was never far.

  Chapter 26

  We scheduled Casey’s interviews so that she would feel more comfortable in known surroundings. Summer suggested we control everything from the chair she sat in, to the light coming into the room, to whether she backed up to the door or a window, to the distance between the camera and her face, to the temperature in the room. And without exception, we controlled every question they asked her. If anyone went off script, one of us would remove them. Forcibly. And without delay.

  We intended to control everything for her benefit and her comfort. While we wanted good reviews and positive press for the book, we did not want to purchase them at Casey’s expense—however that might occur. We were singularly focused on giving Casey a chance to tell her story in the way she could tell it. Given her Broadway and New York City experience, Summer stepped into the role of manager where, behind the scenes, she vehemently defended Casey’s interests without Casey being aware. Which was good because had she known, it would have made her nervous.

  One evening Casey sat finishing an interview while Bones and I watched offset. I did so with coffee, he with a wrinkle betwee
n his brow. Neither of us were comfortable. I voiced it. “Something bugging you?”

  He nodded but never took his eyes off Casey.

  The interviewer asked her, “What have you learned about yourself?”

  Casey never hesitated. “One of the problems with rescuing someone is that their spirit isn’t always quick to follow their body. Especially when they’ve learned to distance or disconnect themselves from the body that houses them. You can take us out of prison, but it may take a while to take the prison out of us. And while the body may heal completely—and it can and does—and we can monitor and measure that healing and that recovery, the spirit is not so easily quantified. What works for the body may not work for the rest of us. All of us who have experienced the trauma of trafficking are bruised, wounded, and scarred not only on the outside but the in. And the amount of time needed to heal is as different as the people themselves. No two of us are the same. One girl’s healing will look different from mine.”

  To our surprise, and despite questions that grew more difficult with each interview, Casey bloomed before our eyes. She had learned how to handle every question and had a unique and beautiful ability to speak “with” both the interviewer and viewer rather than “to.” A talent she’d earned and paid for the hard way.

  At Freetown, we’d never had a story like Casey’s. Yes, we’d rescued girls who’d suffered horrific stories lived out over years, but we’d never had one exit that life only to enter one illuminated by so national a spotlight. So public. Everyone else healed in private. Not Casey. And as I listened to her, I wanted to believe what she shared about that healing.

  Problem was, I did not.

  Chapter 27

  Since arriving at Freetown, Casey had taken to the mountains like a Sherpa, often hiking eight or ten miles with relative ease. I could barely keep up with her. She spent as much time in the mountains as her room.