That Night by Chevy Stevens Page A

My dad’s voice was the only link to the outside world, and I needed to hear that he still loved me, that he always would. He told me that Mom missed me, that she was out shopping or taking a nap, but I knew he was lying. She just couldn’t bring herself to talk to me, couldn’t stop hating me. She’d never said so, but I saw it in her eyes, the way the hope leaked out of them with each witness’s testimony at the trial, until she could barely look at me. She just sat there, holding back sobs, Dad’s arm around her back, rubbing her shoulders, his face bleak. She didn’t even show up the last few days of trial. That’s when I knew she had stopped believing in me.
    My dad wrote me letters, telling me to be strong, hang in there, they’d see me soon. Mom never wrote, never even signed the letters. It was the first thing I did, turn to the last page and look for her signature, but it was never there. I still hoped that she’d look into her heart and see I couldn’t have done it. Then, after I’d been at Rockland for a month, they both came for a scheduled visit.
    Dad’s face was flushed after he came through security but it paled when he saw me sitting in my prison clothes, the guard watching everyone in the room through a window. I hated thinking of my parents going through the metal detector, having their stuff X-rayed, putting it all in a locker. The room had about seven tables, four chairs around each one. A couple of families were at two of the other tables. We weren’t allowed any physical contact, and I ached for a hug from my dad or to even hold his hand. They slid into the chairs across from me.
    I tried to smile, fought to hold back tears thick in my throat. I didn’t want to freak them out. I looked at my mom, searching her eyes, wondering if it was a good sign that she had come. Her face was even thinner than the last time I had seen her, giving her dark hollows beside her lips, which were pale. Only a faint trace of lip liner was left, as though she’d chewed off all the color. Her hair was pulled back tight, the ends ragged in her ponytail. She was also starting to show some gray at the roots, so she must not have been going to the salon anymore for her monthly touch-ups. The lines were deeper around her eyes, which had the same exhausted, desolate expression she’d worn since the murder.
    “Are you okay, honey?” Dad’s face was so kind, his voice so familiar. The voice I’d heard late at night when I battled measles or the flu, when I fell hard off my bike. But now there was this, and it couldn’t be fixed.
    “I’m all right,” I said, doing my best to smile. “Three meals a day and I can sleep all I want. What’s not to like?”
    Dad tried to smile back, but Mom looked shocked for a second, anger flashing in her eyes: How can you make jokes? After what you did?
    We retreated into silence. Dad glanced at Mom like he was waiting for her to say something, but her eyes were darting around to the other inmates and their families, her body stiff. Her hand fidgeted with her shirtsleeve, running the hem between her fingertips, twisting the buttons. For a moment she looked like she might rip one off, maybe run around the room screaming. I wished she would. Anything would be better than the contained agony she’d been walking around in. I wanted to reach out and grab her hand, hold her still, wanted to tell her a hundred times how sorry I was for bringing Nicole out with me that night. But I’d already said it before and she just stared at my mouth, watched my lips move. She couldn’t hear the words, no matter how many times I said them.
    “How are you, Mom?” I said.
    She pulled her mouth back in a smile, but it was strained and made her lips look even paler—bloodless. “Good, busy, with your dad’s work. We’re finally getting some contracts.”
    I’d heard her hushed conversations in her office. We aren’t getting any calls. I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep the company,