Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(135)

A photo of Bo, his eyes wide, holding a little goldtone trophy and a certificate for a ‘Young Writers Program’. With his mamma’s help, he’d written a story and drawn pictures for it: If I Had a Lion for a Pet.

Lilli had sent him the book as a series of photos. At the bottom of each page, in Lilli’s precise handwriting, Bo had dictated such creative insights as If I had a lion for a pet…his litter box would fill a WHOLE

ROOM. For that page, he had drawn a room full of sand, with a giant turd smack in the middle. He was a sharp little artist, even when he wasn’t making fractals. And the awards committee clearly had a sense of humor.

A photo of Lilli. He had no idea who’d taken it. He hoped it was Adrienne. Because if it was a man, any man, then he’d have to kill that f*cker with his bare hands. Not because she was physically exposed in any way—no such picture would have gotten through to him—but because the camera had caught her in such a nakedly unguarded moment he felt like he was seeing right down into her heart, and he was the only man on Earth entitled to that view. She was sitting in their yard, folded up in one of the ancient metal lawn chairs she’d painted vivid hues a few years back. Wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, her most common attire, her bare feet on the chair and her arms around her legs. One hand was wrapped around her other wrist; that hand held a beer. Her gorgeous, chestnut hair was loose rather than caught back in its customary ponytail, and a light breeze had caught her soft waves. Sunlight glinted and made reddish-gold threads through the dark mass. The photo had her in profile. She was staring at her knees, her head tipped down slightly.

Obviously, Lilli had not taken the photo herself. Isaac didn’t know who had, or why they’d given it to her, or why she’d sent it to him. It was a sad f*cking photo, and Lilli was nearly always positive with him since he’d been inside. Suspiciously so, considering how well acquainted he was with her impatience, pragmatism, and dark wit. Yet he treasured this photo above all others. This was his woman. He was seeing her, how she really was, while he was away. He could see her miss him. As truly glad as he was that she and their children were living a life and not merely hibernating until he was back with them, a part of him needed this, too. He needed to see her miss him. Not because he was afraid that she didn’t. He knew for a certainty that she did. But he looked at this photo and almost felt like he could touch her, like their shared yearning stretched through time and space and coiled together.

Lifting his right arm, he stared at the ink there, done a couple of weeks before he’d gone in. A quote in Italian, circling the names of his wife and children. L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle. The love that moves the sun and the other stars. The same words made up a tattoo Lilli had gotten long before he’d met her as a memorial to her father. But to Isaac, those words, and the love they described, meant his love for Lilli, her love for him, and the life they’d made together in it.

He set his book aside and got out his notebook and a pen, deciding to write Lilli instead. She wrote him every day. He wrote almost as often, to the extent that it was possible. She always wrote on light purple paper, scented like the scent of her soap. She’d never worn perfume in all the years they’d been together, and her natural scent was his favorite smell on the planet. When he’d convinced her that letters were better than the shitty pseudo-email system he could pay for access to, she’d begun sending him letters on this purple paper that smelled of lavender. He guessed she’d figured the next best thing to figuring out how to send him her own smell was to send him the scent of her soap. She’d guessed right. The smell of lavender would now probably get him hard until his dying day.

His letters went out to her on plain prison commissary paper, but he didn’t think she minded. They had a joke going about their Austenian correspondence; he wasn’t sure when it had started. When they were in the mood to be funny, they’d taken to writing in Victorian diction. He wasn’t in that mood tonight.



Hey, baby.

I hope Christmas was good. Did B. like his electric Harley? And did G.’s new bow come in on time?

I’ve been thinking all day about sitting with you on Christmas Eve, putting toys together and giving Santa the credit. Sharing a beer. Fucking on the rug in front of the tree.



He stopped and wadded up the paper. That wouldn’t get through. And even if it would, he didn’t need some BOP f*ck getting off thinking about him and Lilli. On a new sheet, he rewrote the lines up to the last sentence.



Today was just a day here. They try to pretend it’s special, but the only special thing about it is a day off. I miss you. I miss you so f*cking much it’s killing me. I’m dying off a little bit every day.



“COUNT!”

Damn. Isaac hadn’t realized that it had gotten so late. He’d have to finish the letter tomorrow. Or start a new one in a different mood—that would probably be for the best.

Len swung in just as Isaac stood.

“You good, boss?”

“I’m okay, brother. You?”

His friend shrugged. “Merry f*cking Christmas, you know?”

“Yeah.”





X


The 1,070th Day



“Daddy!” After nearly three years, Gia knew to wait, but she stood there, bouncing, waiting for Isaac to be let all the way into the Visitors Center. Bo stood at her side. He still didn’t talk much. He could—Lilli said he did, and that his vocabulary, if not his diction, was developmentally on target, but only when he was comfortable where he was. She’d finally relented and put him in speech and behavioral therapy and was getting him tested, because he would not speak at school. Or anywhere he was uncomfortable.