Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(32)

And yet, my heart still skipped a beat when he walked into the room. The sound of his laugh filled an ache in my chest. The feel of his long, strong fingers retained the power to make me shiver.

And I hated him for that. For hurting me and then being decent about it. I didn’t want him kind or gentle or remorseful. I wanted him to be the bad guy. Then I could’ve just left him. Changed the locks on the doors and never looked back. But dammit, he kept trying. He ended the relationship as I asked. He moved out of our bedroom into the basement as I asked. He suggested marriage counseling, though in the end, I was the one who proved resistant. But he kept at it, dozens of tiny little gestures, trying to reassure me of his love, and that he was sorry and he really did want me back. Except, instead of making me feel better, all of his outreaches simply made me feel worse.

I wondered, did he spoon with her afterward? Feed her oranges? Watch her lounge around in nothing but his favorite dress shirt? Did he whisper to her the kind of innermost dreams he once used to share with me?

I couldn’t let her go. She had entered our marriage, some pretty young thing, and I didn’t know how to get her back out again. So I’d pop open the orange prescription bottle, shaking out two, then four, then six chalky white pills. Trying to halt the endless stream of painful imagery running through my head.

But even I understood it wasn’t the memory of That Day I was trying to dull with the pills. Not even the pain of betrayal that I needed to go away.

It was my love for my husband I was desperately trying to let go.

Because if I could love him less, then maybe I could forgive him more.

And it had amazed even me, how many pills it was taking to get the job done.


ASHLYN HAD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM. She whispered her need in my ear as we were ushered into a single cell, her trembling body pressed to my side. I nodded once, half listening to her and half hearing the clang of the steel door slamming shut behind us.

We were together, a pathetic party of three, now garbed in identical prison orange jumpsuits. The smallest size was still too large for Ashlyn, rolled up at the ankles and still swimming on her slight frame. The jumpsuits all had short sleeves, which I thought would be cold, except the cell was hot, the whole wing almost oppressive with its stale, overheated air.

Z had informed us the thermostat was set at a fixed seventy-six degrees. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Didn’t matter in a prison. Likewise, the overhead lights were on 24/7. Morning, noon or night, also irrelevant for life behind bars.

Our dingy white cinder-block cell was narrow and deep, with a set of cream-painted steel bunks on either side, topped by what appeared to be a few inches of foam covered in a vinyl I could only describe as Smurf blue. The end of the cell featured a tall, narrow window bisected by a single steel bar. The door, comprised mostly of twelve-gauge steel, also boasted a thin viewing window, probably for a guard to check on the inmates. The window in the far wall overlooked bare, brown earth. The window in the door overlooked the cell block’s cavernous dayroom, where prisoners could commune at hard metal tables, or tend to hygiene in exposed showers. In the middle of the space sat a lone command post, most likely where one corrections officer supervised an entire two-story wing of stacked cells.

I checked for Z, Radar or the one called Mick. Best I could tell, all three had disappeared. The dayroom was empty. We were finally alone, shuttered up with a mere seven locked doors between us and freedom.

I relayed Ashlyn’s need to Justin. He nodded once, jaw clenched, eyes hard with equal parts rage and helplessness. When he turned to our daughter, however, his face softened and he sounded almost normal.

“So, here’s the first part of prison life.” He spoke briskly, as if describing a strange, new adventure. “One toilet, one sink for all of us to share—”

“Daddy—”

“Think of it as summer camp—”

“I can’t—”

“Ashlyn, stop. I need you to hold strong. We’re going to get through this.”

Her lower lip trembled. She was on the verge of tears.

I wanted to reach out to my daughter, but I didn’t. Because what would be the point? Don’t cry, darling, we’ll all be okay?

We’d been abducted by madmen out of our own home. We were clad in thin orange jumpsuits with slippers on our feet, shoved into a white eight-by-ten cell where there was barely enough room to stand and the only places to sit were prison bunks topped by the world’s thinnest vinyl mattresses. Things were not all right. Things were wrong, very, very wrong, and probably going to get worse.

Justin moved to stand at the far window, his back to the toilet, his broad shoulders covering the exposed window. I moved to block the window in the doorway, my back also to my daughter, who’d begun demanding privacy at age eight, and by age fifteen, found anything involving the human body totally mortifying if not completely shameful.

The quiet was unbearable. The rustle of Ashlyn awkwardly struggling with her oversize jumpsuit ricocheting around the hard-edged space.

I started humming. Thought of Justin’s tone, as if this were nothing but a camping adventure, and found myself singing: I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas. Which led Justin to adding, raspy and off-key, I loke to ote, ote, ote opples and bononos.

I filled in with the I verse, Justin handled the letter A, then we combined for E and U. We had just wrapped up, when I heard, right behind me, Ashlyn break down into total, body-heaving sobs. I turned, caught my daughter as she collapsed and held her against me. Justin moved away from the window, wrapping his larger arms around us, and we stood together, nobody speaking a word.