With Love from the Inside

by Angela Pisel

  “You want to leave tomorrow? Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Thomas frowned. “You slept the entire drive home, and the trip to Charlotte’s an even longer drive. I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

  “I’m fine, really. I feel like myself today.”

  He stopped filtering through the stack of mail Sophie had placed on the counter, reached over, and felt the back of her head. “You still have a pretty good bump.”

  “Stop!” Sophie removed his arm. “I’m fine.” Her words came out harsher than she’d intended them to.

  Thomas studied her face for a while, as if he were looking at someone he wasn’t sure he really knew. “I love you, I’m worried about you. That’s all.”

  She stared down at her wedding ring, twisting it around on her finger. Anything not to look into his eyes.

  “Go, if you think you need to, but be careful. Fainting isn’t normal. Please promise me you’ll at least make an appointment to see your doctor as soon as you get back.”

  —

  SOPHIE ROLLED IN AND OUT of bed a half-dozen times, each time mumbling another excuse to Thomas as to why she couldn’t sleep. “I have so much to do before I leave tomorrow” was what she said the final time her restlessness woke him up. He took his pillow and left to sleep on the sofa.

  Every fib made her feel like she was digging a hole for herself that would someday bury her. She questioned her decision to leave at least twenty times. Forget about that part of your life. It’s over, keep your clean (jagged, at best) break, and stop all the second-guessing.

  Maybe she was reading too much into the newspaper article. It hadn’t given a name—certainly the prison had more than one person who’d killed a baby, a thought that disturbed her on many levels. And possibly the letter meant something else. Papers she needed to sign? There must be many reasons for a lawyer to contact a client’s family.

  Sophie was halfway to Charlotte before she convinced herself Ben Taylor only wanted to be paid. The strong words in his letter were his way of getting her attention. Her mother had no money left after the legal fees from her trial. “I know I’m behind on the mortgage,” a thirteen-year-old Sophie overheard her dad whisper in the phone. “Please give me some more time.”

  She started to call Ben Taylor’s bluff, to turn her car around and go home, but the thought of making up another lie to Thomas stopped her. She couldn’t turn back—not now, anyway.

  GRACE

  I hope Sophie was distracted today. Maybe out buying some lipstick or sledding, wearing her red mittens somewhere. Anything that kept her occupied and away from a newspaper. I can’t comfort her and I couldn’t bear the thought of her—alone—hearing the news about someone being executed.

  Officer Jones was right. This place was crazy. I tried not to look out my window, but the honking horns and chants drew me in. I was surprised, I guess, by the interest. The man being put to death hadn’t had a visitor in years. I hope he had one today.

  I couldn’t stop myself from wondering: Is he scared? Does he have an appetite? Has he thought about his last words?

  I knew I was going to have to answer those questions, sooner than I’d like to, but to be quite honest I was having a hard time lumping myself in his category. That guy did some pretty bad stuff.

  I attempted to keep busy. Tried to force myself to stop thinking about what was happening on the other side of the prison, but even the air felt different in here. Electric, but heavy at the same time.

  We were on lockdown until further notice, which means we can’t leave our cells for any reason. My radio works only part-time. The antenna is broken and has to be propped at just the right angle, and even then it can get only a few stations. I usually hear about every third word.

  I cleaned when I needed to pass the time, determined to rid every indentation in my crème-colored cinder-block walls of filth. No matter how many times I scrubbed, I still thought I saw residue from somebody else’s excrement. After my arms wore out, I stopped and did some sit-ups. My abs, I have to say, looked pretty good.

  Before I was in here, I never exercised. I’d make up a thousand different reasons as to why I couldn’t walk on the treadmill or run in my neighborhood. “I’m exhausted,” or “Paul needs his church clothes washed.” Now, when physical activity was considered an earned privilege, I’d give up days of sleep just to do jumping jacks in a rainstorm.

  “Tray coming through,” Officer Mackey shouted through the door. He had a thick accent, from someplace north of here, like New York or New Jersey. He’s nice enough, but when he talked fast my mouth felt like sandpaper.

  My dinner tray popped through the door and transported a cold, shriveled-up hot dog and watery applesauce. I was starving, so I was grateful the bun, at least, wasn’t soggy.

  “Stand for count,” he ordered, after I’d had my tray for fifteen minutes. I took a quick drink of my water.

  I stood up and faced front. He stared at me for a second through the window and then wrote something in red ink on his paper.

  “Stand for count,” he yelled into Roni’s cell.

  In a few seconds, he repeated himself again. Stand for count, Roni. I’d seen her have to be dragged out of her cell before, and that wasn’t pleasant for anyone.

  I didn’t hear him say anything else, so I guessed this time she listened.

  “Count all clear,” he said, presumably to Officer Jones. She’d said she was working this evening.

  “The doors will open in ten minutes, ladies. You can go to the dayroom or stay in your cells. The choice is yours.”

  I put my tray in the slot, thankful my cell door would finally be opened. The truth was, though, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I cared only about writing to Sophie. Jada and Carmen must feel the same way. I haven’t heard a word from either one of them all night.

  “You coming out?” Roni asked after our doors unlocked. Inmates weren’t allowed to congregate in any area other than the dayroom. She kept moving down the hallway as she talked. “I was hoping we could write.” She waved a few letters at me in the air.

  “Be there in a minute,” I answered. Something love-worthy will do us both good.

  Roni received mail several times a week. When her first letter arrived, we were sitting together. I watched her stare at the envelope, taking in the front and then the back. She even put it up to her nose and smelled it.

  “Who’s your letter from?” I had asked her after several minutes of this strange behavior.

  She’d looked up with her tight eyes fixed squarely on me. I wished I could take back my question.

  “Sorry. None of my business.” I put my hands up in surrender and scooted my chair over.

  She still didn’t answer or look away.

  I’d done it this time. I sprung up, praying she wouldn’t follow me, but she grabbed my arm and pulled me back down.

  “I’m sorry, Roni.” My eyes stuck on her this time, begging her not to slam me against the concrete floor. “I won’t ask again.”

  She took her arm off me. “I don’t know who it’s from.” She threw the letter in my lap. “You look.”

  I rubbed my arm for a few seconds before picking up the letter, which was now lying faceup on the floor.

  Roni can’t read, I figured out, since the name was written plain and clear.

  “It’s from a Carl Cooper,” I told her, trying to gauge her reaction before I said any more. When she didn’t respond, I said, “He lives in Alabama.”

  She still didn’t say a word. After a few long minutes, she snatched the envelope from my hand and tore it in half.

  A few weeks later another letter came. She asked me to read it to her when we were eating lunch together in the dayroom. I wasn’t sure why she’d changed her mind, but I removed the paper from the open slit in the top of the envelope.

  “Dear Roni,” it started, “I didn�
��t hear back from you. Did you get my last letter?”

  She stared at her sweet tea, stirring it with her plastic spoon. I continued: “I heard what happened to you. I’m so very sorry.”

  She took her spoon out and put it beside her drink. Her head slumped over the table.

  “I know I haven’t been a part of your life”—I glanced up from the page to see if I should go on reading—“but I’d like to change that.”

  Roni lifted her head up and stiffened her back against the chair. She pushed her half-eaten egg salad sandwich to the center of the table.

  “I’d like to meet you.”

  She cocked her rigid head and fixed her gaze, staring at something or someplace I couldn’t see. Red lines formed in the corners of her eyes. She took the letter from me before I had a chance to finish.

  I opened my mouth before I thought better. “Who’s the letter from?”

  She answered this time, but her voice sounded brittle. “My father. My biological father.”

  She didn’t say another word and I didn’t, either. The letters continued to stack up until one day when Carmen was in the infirmary and Jada paced in her cell, Roni asked me if I would help her write him back.

  So tonight, like many times before, she and I sat together as I helped her write a reply to his latest question. Some parts of her face, for the first time I’d seen, anyway, moved effortlessly. The pencil she held tightly in her hand copied the last sentence I’d written for her. “Yes, you can visit over Christmas.”

  Roni’s countenance had changed, and it was a milestone worth documenting, a photo a mother should have placed in her scrapbook. A picture I’d happily taken of Sophie.

  If I had some hay, I’d place it in a manger, because this day was love-worthy. If I can’t see my daughter this December, maybe I can help Carl Cooper see his.

  SOPHIE

  The drive to Brookfield took longer than Sophie anticipated. So long, in fact, she prayed she would make it to the attorney’s office before they closed for the evening. Sophie checked the time on the dashboard of her car. Four-forty-five. Please, Mr. Taylor, be in your office. She couldn’t stand spending any more time than necessary in her hometown.

  Her car rounded the last long, winding curve before entering Brookfield—population 1,451. The green Welcome to Brookfield sign hadn’t changed since she left eleven years ago. Hasn’t anyone had a baby in this town or died of old age? She knew of at least four people who no longer could be counted as residents in the census. Didn’t the Bradshaw family account for anything?

  She drove past the sign and bitterly entered her past. I will not let this place get to me, I will not let this place get to me. She chanted her tune of immunity as she tried to remember where his office was located. Downtown (or maybe uptown in a place this small) by the courthouse and across from the 40th Street Café. Another five minutes, one flashing stoplight, and two right turns, and she should be there.

  About the time Sophie started to exhale, she heard sirens. She checked her rearview mirror, supposing it would be too much to ask if the black-and-white police car riding her bumper was after someone else. Great, a town with one police officer and he happens to clock me.

  She flicked on her right turn signal and pulled her SUV over into the gravel parking lot in front of the IGA grocery store. The faded gray-and-white vertical-striped siding still looked exactly the same as it had a decade ago. The lightbulb in the oversize red A still flickered, still not fully illuminated—begging for someone, for anyone, to recognize it needed attention.

  The policeman followed close behind her, keeping his sirens on even after both cars came to a complete stop. All right, already, Sophie thought to herself. Can’t believe the speed limit is still twenty-five miles per hour through this part of town. Zero traffic and you still have to drive slow as hell.

  A cop in his early sixties emerged from the police car. His thick black belt, armed with a holster, handcuffs, and a billy club, underlined his draping belly. “Ma’am, good evening. Are you in a hurry to get someplace?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie said, deciding to play ignorant, hoping her speedometer was as dishonest as she was. “Was I going too fast?”

  “I have you clocked at forty-nine miles per hour. By my calculations, that is twenty-four miles over the speed limit.” His overenunciated words took the southern draw to a new level.

  “Oh no!” Sophie said, trying to decide if ignorance or an apology would get her on her way faster. “I’m so sorry,” she decided. “I’m not feeling well. I guess I’m a little distracted.”

  “Can I see your license and registration, please?” His voice sounded vaguely familiar. Sophie pulled her license out of the slot in her billfold and then reached over and retrieved her registration from the console between her front seats. She handed them both to the officer.

  “Well, Mrs. Logan,” the officer said, looking at her driver’s license, then back at her, “what brings you in such a hurry to the lovely town of Brookfield?”

  “In town on family business,” Sophie told him. “I used to live here.”

  The officer looked at her license once again, and then looked back at Sophie, studying her ring finger and her face before he spoke. “What’s your maiden name?”

  Sophie pressed her lips together and contemplated the possible implications of engaging him in a high-speed chase.

  The officer asked her again. “Ma’am, your maiden name?”

  Flashes of O.J. and the white-Bronco debacle sped through her mind. “Bradshaw. My name used to be Sophie Bradshaw.”

  He once again studied the picture on her license and then looked back at her, squinting. “Are you Grace Bradshaw’s daughter?”

  They both put the pieces of their last interaction together at about the same time. He’d been one of the officers outside her brother’s hospital room. Grace Bradshaw, you are under arrest for the murder of your infant son, William Joseph Bradshaw.

  He looked at her with the same pitiable look he had on the day he’d witnessed her sobbing in her father’s arms. Don’t take my mommy. Leave my mommy alone.

  The officer handed Sophie back her license and registration, as if this act of goodwill might somehow make up for the pain he inflicted all those years ago.

  “Hope you feel better, Mrs. Logan. I’ll let you go with a warning this time. Slow down and drive safe.”

  —

  “MAY I HELP YOU?”

  “I need to see Ben Taylor,” Sophie said to the woman pulling her key from the arched knotty-walnut front door. A bronze fleur-de-lis door knocker hung beside a scratched gold-plated sign that read The Law Offices of Benjamin R. Taylor. “Is he here?”

  “Our office is closed for the day, Ms. Colby. You should’ve checked your calendar.” Her hair didn’t move as she bobbled her head. “Your appointment was yesterday.”

  “I’m not Ms. Colby,” Sophie said. “I need to see Mr. Taylor.”

  The woman dropped the keys in her embroidered clutch before finally glancing in Sophie’s direction. “Oh! Sorry about that. I just assumed. Just to let you know, Mr. Taylor is too busy to handle any more child-custody cases or bad marriages that are contemplating divorce.” She sized up Sophie to see if she might fit into either one of those categories.

  Sophie sized her up, too, thinking she had a lot of confidence for a woman whose bouffant and pale blue dress screamed Alice from The Brady Bunch.

  “I’m not here for that,” Sophie replied, wiping underneath her eyes with the tips of her fingers. She didn’t need another person in this town feeling sorry for her, but this was her own fault. She should’ve checked her reflection after a long day of driving. Black smudge marks now transferred themselves to the tips of her right hand as she dabbed at her smudged makeup. “I received a letter in the mail. He asked to see me.”

  The woman grabbed the scrolled handrail and moved
rather quickly down the stairs. “Be here around one p.m. tomorrow and I’ll see if I can squeeze you in.”

  —

  SOPHIE SAT IN HER CAR for such a long time that people leaving the café began to look inside to make sure she was still breathing. Should she wait until tomorrow afternoon and hope she could see Ben Taylor? Or should she drive back home and hope Thomas was asleep and didn’t ask her any questions?

  Her cell phone rang before she could decide.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, baby, checking on you to see if you made it to Charlotte okay.” For a moment Sophie struggled to remember the last lie she’d told Thomas. Charlotte—oh, yes, meeting with chefs for the fund-raiser.

  “I did make it here fine. Problem is”—she paused again, trying to fabricate a dilemma—“I didn’t get to meet with everyone I wanted to.”

  “That’s a problem,” Thomas said. He sounded distracted but interested. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe stay tonight. Long way to come if I don’t get the information I need.” Half-truths were becoming her specialty.

  “Are you still there?” she asked after he didn’t respond.

  “Sorry, still here. Have a lot going on. Why don’t you spend the night? I’m going to be at my office for a while.”

  “I think I will,” Sophie replied, thankful for the easy interaction. “What’s going on with you?”

  “I’m going over some notes from the hospital. You remember the little girl who died?”

  “Of course I remember. You sound concerned. Anything going on?”

  “An attorney’s office called requesting my records. You know that can’t be good. I’m going over things, trying to figure out what possibly could’ve gone wrong.” She heard him shuffle some pages as he talked.

  She could picture him, the Sherlock Holmes of the surgery department, sitting behind his polished dark cherry desk, the drawers detailed with elegant filigree. One hand running through his hair, the other scanning every single lab value and vital sign in the child’s record. Journals stacked in front of him, one on top of the other, in alphabetical order and color-coded by procedure. Framed diplomas, lining the wall behind him, declaring his multiple accolades. Summa Cum Laude. Chief Resident with Highest Honors. Distinguished Fellow in Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery. Thomas did not miss details.