Death Row novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Vent

Three years before the lobby, a new woman came onto the row on a Tuesday night, and she would not stop crying.

I heard it through the vent over my sink.

I had been there three years myself by then, and I knew the rule.

You let a new woman cry the first night.

The second night you start to count how long.

"Hey," I said, around midnight, into the grate. "Whoever that is. The walls are thin."

The crying stopped.

"Who's there?" It was a young voice, hoarse and furious. "Who is that?"

"The cell next to yours. Leah."

"Oh." She sniffed hard. "Hi. Sorry."

"Don't be."

"I'm Dorrie. I didn't do it. I know everybody says that."

"They do."

"Mine's true."

"I know," I said, because on that row it was the only polite answer.

She laughed once, and the laugh cracked.

"You don't know," she said. "Nobody knows. They don't even know there's a me. They only know the wife."

I lay back on my bunk and looked at the ceiling.

"Dorrie, how old are you?"

"Twenty-eight."

"I was twenty-eight."

"When what?"

"When I came."

She was quiet.

"They let you live this long," she said. "Three years. That's good, right? That's a good sign."

"It means the paperwork is slow."

"Oh." A pause. "God."

"Don't think about the end," I said. "Think about the next hour."

"How?"

"Do you have anything in your cell?"

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