by Bethany-Kris
Those same questions she had been asking herself for a good month and a half fought their way out, demanding to be spoken aloud so that maybe … God, maybe, she would finally be able to sleep at night.
“I don’t know who you are,” Karen told him, hoping he could read her lips enough to understand what she had said.
She loved the man she thought she knew.
She cared for the person who let her chase his nightmares away.
She wanted to hold the man who made her feel like she was the most important thing in his world.
But the man standing behind the glass, the one with a last name that she now knew should frighten her, and affiliations that labeled him one of the worst kinds of criminals …
No, Karen didn’t know that man at all.
But she wanted to.
Because she believed, no matter what, she’d love him, too.
“I’m sorry,” Dino mouthed. “I’ll see you soon.”
That was it.
That was all he said.
Dino was gone before Karen could even think about what she wanted to do or say next. All she saw was his back as he disappeared beyond the barrier, and he didn’t even look back at her that time.
She fell into the hard chair with a thump, suddenly feeling so unsteady and unsure.
Had she made a mistake?
Was she wrong for wanting that man?
I’ll see you soon.
His words rang through her mind like a clanging bell, over and over again. It left her feeling more unsure than ever, like her world had suddenly been put on pause because he wasn’t kind enough to tell her this was the end.
Instead, he’d put them on hold.
Dino didn’t seem to understand that it couldn’t work that way for Karen. While he was locked away and unable to explain himself to her, the world wouldn’t stop for her while she waited for him to get out.
Her world still turned.
She was still pregnant.
She had to keep moving forward so that she could do what she needed to do in order to care for his child. She wouldn’t keep putting herself through hell emotionally, on the off chance that Dino might give something more to her than a look that made her heart clench and words that only cut her deeper.
She wouldn’t be coming back to the prison at all after today. She had given him the chance to tell her who he was and what he needed or wanted from her, and he hadn’t even tried to provide her with those things.
Dino cared.
He loved her.
Karen knew those things without a doubt.
The problem was, love couldn’t always be enough and no matter what people tried to say, it couldn’t be unconditional. Love without barriers meant no one thought about the other side of the equation—they didn’t take into account how their behavior or actions might hurt someone else.
It was selfish to love that way.
It was unhealthy.
Yet, a small part of her still didn’t care.
I’ll see you soon.
Maybe by the time he was ready—by the time he could give her what she needed—Karen wouldn’t need or want it anymore. The part of her that he owned could be put on the shelf for a time while she waited on him, but the rest of her was still going to have to keep moving.
She was worried the rest of her would eventually take the waiting part with it, too.
That probably scared her the most.
Karen
IT had taken Karen a long time—long enough that a guard had come to tell her she needed to leave so the next visitor could come in—for her to stand up and ready to leave the prison. The heaviness in her heart wouldn’t leave, no matter what she did.
It was a long drive home from the prison to her apartment in upper Chicago, and she wasn’t exactly looking forward to the silence. When she was alone, her second thoughts and misdeeds were far more apparent, and since she didn’t have anyone else to talk to, she was left with talking to her damn self.
There had been a time once when Karen didn’t mind talking to herself; she hadn’t minded her own company.
Those days were long gone.
On the drive home, Karen turned the radio up loud enough to drown out her own thoughts. She certainly hurt, but she wasn’t going to add to the pile with her own guilty conscience.
Thankfully, the drive home went by far quicker than she thought it would. It was only when her apartment building was in sight did she start to feel slightly normal again, a calm sense of relief sweeping over her senses.
Strange, how that worked …
A person didn’t know how much they should appreciate freedom until they were forced to see what it was like for those who had their freedom taken away.
Karen shook her head to rid those thoughts, parking the car in her allotted spot and making her way to the building entrance. She unlocked the entrance door, ignoring the slight tremor rocking her hand from the emotions still building up steam in her body. She’d done well to pretend on the drive home that her life wasn’t falling apart.
Now that she was almost home, those traitorous emotions were beginning to spill over.
She barely noticed her neighbor balancing two brown bags of groceries just across from her own apartment as she fumbled with the lock.
Just a couple more seconds, and she could … do whatever she needed to do.
Cry.
Break down.
Wallow for a while.
“Oh, Karen!”
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one with attention that was elsewhere. Her neighbor only noticed she was unlocking her apartment as she pushed the door open.
Karen cursed inside her head, wishing the older woman hadn’t stopped her, if only because she wanted to get the hell inside her apartment and hide away from the rest of the world for a while. She couldn’t exactly be rude to an old woman—it wasn’t Karen’s style.
Bess was in her late fifties, and lived alone. She rarely had guests, except for the occasional yearly visit from her daughter who had moved to Colorado years ago. She did well for being older and living on her own, barely asking for help and only if something was very important. However, she did invite Karen over for dinner or tea occasionally.
Karen never said no.
She didn’t want today to be the first day when she had to refuse Bess.
Clearing her throat and hoping the emotion was gone from her tone, Karen turned slightly and asked, “Yes?”
“Here, take these a moment.” Bess pushed both bags of groceries into Karen’s arms, shooting the younger woman a warm, but apologetic smile at the same time. “Damn key keeps sticking.”
“You should talk to the building manager about that, Bess.”
“I am—I will. He’s a tad useless, though, isn’t he?”
Karen found herself smiling at Bess’s mutterings. The older woman fumbled with her key and the deadbolt for another ten seconds before she finally got the lock to unlatch. Bess pushed open her door and turned to take the groceries from Karen with another sheepish smile.
“Thank you, dear.”
Karen shrugged. “No problem. I’m just going to—”
“Well, wait a moment,” Bess interrupted, “so I don’t forget again.”
Forget what?
Karen was too tired to voice her confusion, but since Bess didn’t invite her inside when the old woman disappeared into her apartment, she figured it didn’t matter. If Bess had wanted her to come over for dinner or tea, she would already be in the lady’s apartment.
That was just how Bess worked.
She didn’t take “No” for an answer.
Karen waited another minute or two before Bess finally reappeared in her doorway, a white envelope in her hands. The scrawl across the front was not familiar, but her name and address was still perfectly written in block letters.
“The mail man must have shoved it into my box by accident,” Bess said, handing the envelope over to Karen.
For a long while, Karen
stared at the envelope, not moving or even speaking to thank Bess for the mail. Maybe it was the largely written DO NOT RETURN TO SENDER in the top left-hand corner that made Karen pause. The money Dino had sent to her months ago had arrived with the same message in the return address spot.
Had he sent her something else?
The handwriting was not the same as Dino’s, of that Karen was sure, but that didn’t stop her from wondering.
“It came about two and a half weeks ago,” Bess said, “but I kept forgetting to bring it to you.”
Karen waved off Bess’s concerns. “It’s fine.”
Why was her voice so faint?
Bess took note of Karen’s sudden change in demeanor, asking, “Are you okay, dear? I couldn’t help but notice I haven’t been seeing a lot of you, coming and going like you usually do around the building lately. Probably one of the reasons why I kept forgetting I had your mail.”
Only an elderly person could be nosy and not be rude about it at the same time.
Karen appreciated Bess’s concern, but she didn’t want to weigh her old neighbor down with details of her life she wasn’t even sure she was supposed to share. Never mind the fact she just wasn’t in the mood to talk lately.
“I’m fine,” Karen said, flashing Bess a smile she hoped was enough to ward off any further worries the woman might have. “Thank you for this.”
She waved the envelope high, and Bess nodded in response.
“I’m just across the hall if you need anything, dear,” Bess said.
“And the same goes for you.”
One quick hug that Bess had given with no questions asked later, and the old woman was gone, disappearing back into her apartment and shutting the door. Karen was left alone in the hall, and it took her far longer than she wanted to admit before she realized she was free to hide away in her own apartment like she had wanted to all damn day.
Closing her apartment door, latching the deadbolt, and taking off her boots and jacket had never felt better. Karen tried not to dwell on the odd envelope sitting on her kitchen table as she readied a cup of ginger tea. She was less likely to have a spell of morning sickness after she ate dinner, if she drank the tea while she ate.
Also, morning sickness was a complete and total myth.
That curse came and went whenever it felt like it.
Given she was well into her second trimester of pregnancy, it should have started to wane a bit. Maybe it had a little, considering instead of every day—sometimes twice a day—she only experienced it a couple times a week now.
That was something to be grateful for, right?
The small business card reminder on her fridge caught her attention as she opened the door to pull out leftovers from the night before to reheat.
21 week ultrasound appointment, it read.
Karen stared at the date scrawled in the timeslot, realizing how soon that was approaching. She would find out the gender of the baby, and be reassured everything was looking normal as far as development went. And she would finally be able to see her baby.
She’d had an ultrasound early in the pregnancy, due to the fact she was approaching thirty years of age and this was her first pregnancy. Although the ultrasound had gone quite well, and the tech praised the baby and pointed it out on the screen for her to see, all Karen could distinguish was a tiny peanut-shaped blob.
A blob that was sucking the energy out of her, giving her emotional whiplash, and making her sick on a regular basis.
Then again, at that point, she really hadn’t connected to the fact she was pregnant. That, or she hadn’t been ready to at that time.
The bigger problem was the fact that Karen didn’t have a whole lot of money to be throwing away on doctor’s appointments because healthcare was fucking expensive and she didn’t have a damn job. Her savings were already gone, but her rent was paid for another two months.
You do have money, her mind reminded her, right under your bed in a shoebox.
Karen still hadn’t conceded to the idea of using Dino’s money for her needs. She didn’t know where the money had come from, or if it was a byproduct of his business. It probably was. She wasn’t sure if she was okay with that.
Doesn’t matter. Baby comes first. Deal with it later.
Karen sighed, knowing her inner voice was right.
Whether she liked it or not, Dino had provided her with a way to care for herself and their child, at least until she got back on her feet and could handle her business again.
That didn’t mean she particularly had to like it.
Once Karen had the leftovers heating in the microwave, she sat down at the table and reached for the envelope again. She fingered the edges of the white paper, wondering once more if this had somehow come from Dino.
It was only after she had it opened, pulled out the few papers, and unfolded them, did she know for sure it had come from him … somehow. While the handwriting on the outside hadn’t been Dino’s, the content on the inside was absolutely his.
Karen wasn’t sure how long she sat there staring at the letters and words that didn’t seem to make sense. And it wasn’t because the letter itself didn’t make sense, but because the ink of the pen that Dino had used to write seemed to bleed together right before her eyes.
Finally, those tears she had been holding back fell.
Four entire minutes passed before Karen was able to clear away the tears enough to actually read the letter in her hands. In just the first few sentences, she understood clearly how Dino had been able to get the letter to her with no stamp attached that said it had come from a jailhouse or a prison. His lawyer would be sending it for him, he had explained, and he had written it shortly before he agreed to the deal the prosecution had offered him.
The date in the top right-hand corner confirmed what he had written down below.
Bess might have only gotten the letter two and a half weeks earlier, but Dino had written it over a month ago. Karen reached for the envelope, noting the time stamp printed across the front. The letter had been sent a good week after Dino had written it.
Karen couldn’t help but wonder if this was what she had been looking for?
Was this the answers to the questions keeping her up at night?
Would she finally be able to understand just who Dino DeLuca was and why he had done what he did?
Karen kept reading, and by the time she was halfway down the first page, the tears started to well again and her chest got terribly tight with an ache she hadn’t felt in a long time.
I’m sorry I lied to you by hiding things from you; I knew—I thought I knew—that you wouldn’t want me as I was, but instead, who you thought I was, he had written, his handwriting becoming messier in the spots where his feelings became clearer and his tone was less clinical. I’ve never had to be just myself with someone, because my whole life has been wrapped up in a neat little bow to be everything that everyone else wanted.
Karen almost wanted to stop reading—it would have been easier.
She probably could have held onto her anger and bitterness for a little while longer.
She wouldn’t have had to feel guilty about walking away from someone she didn’t know who had hurt her so badly.
Except reading Dino’s words … she found she did know him.
Or the parts that mattered.
An orphaned boy, left to look after his siblings. Abusive guardians.
He felt like the sacrifice, she thought, as she took in his explanation of why he didn’t mind taking the abuse so his siblings wouldn’t have to deal with it, or at least, not as badly as he did.
As Karen read Dino’s words, from the first page to that very final fifth one, she realized she knew exactly who this man was. She wasn’t entirely sure why she had thought that she didn’t know him, because he had already given her a lot of these words in bits and pieces, in his actions and behaviors, and in the things he wouldn’t do during their time together.
Never had she understood how truly w
orthless Dino felt about himself than she did as she read his words over and over again.
He saw himself as disposable.
He didn’t want to be loved because he didn’t deserve to be.
He might not have written those exact words, but they still rang out loudly and repeatedly.
At the very end, he had answered something that bothered her so much for so long. Ever since that packet of money had arrived on her doorstep with nothing more than a hastily scrawled note that explained the cash away.
Except it also stung with its final words, too.
Do not give the child my names.
She would never be able to forget that.
But in this letter, she saw his reasoning and heard his request without the pain stabbing into her heart at the same time.
I want better for my child, Karen. I don’t know how to be a father or if I can even be one, but I know they deserve better. Something more than a last name that will forever be tied to something that will label him or her as a bad seed. Something else, other than a family name that reminds me of pain and secrets hidden behind closed doors. I want my child to be safe, to be free. I’ve never been free.
Karen dropped the papers to the table, but her gaze found his last few words.
The closest I ever came to freedom was you.
I love you. I’m sorry, even if you don’t know what for.
I’ll see you soon. —Dino
Dino
COUNTING down days was no longer working as a way to pass time for Dino. It was not enough for him to know he had already served six months of his sentence, with another year to go. If anything, counting the days had only made it feel like slowing time down.
What was the old saying?
A watched pot never boiled.
Instead, he’d started counting the blobs of stucco on the ceiling of his cell, making almost a game out of how high of a number he could reach before something—or someone—would interrupt him.
251, 252, 253 …
Thankfully, his cellmate was a quiet individual, for the most part, who had learned to sleep eighteen hours out of the day. Dino wasn’t much of a fucking conversationalist anyway, and he didn’t offer much beyond the good morning quip. He looked out for his cellmate, though, which was as much as he could give.
