Condemned by My Sister novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Letters

The housekeeper had said yes on the phone that morning, before Marianne finished asking.

"I've been waiting five years for somebody to ask me," she'd said. "Tell me where to stand."

Now Marianne stood at the top of the stairs at home with a court order in her hand.

It let her go through the rooms Corbin had left, with an officer to watch.

The officer was young and embarrassed, and he waited in the hall.

Corbin's old room was at the end of the second floor.

It smelled like cedar and laundry soap, and the bed was made so tight it looked drawn on.

Marianne opened the desk drawers and found nothing but pens and receipts.

She opened the closet and found suits, all dark, all pressed.

She knelt and pulled out the shoe boxes, one by one, and put each back.

The sixth box was heavier than a shoe box had any reason to be.

She lifted the lid.

The first thing I saw was my own handwriting.

It was on a stack of envelopes, standing on their sides in a drawer.

Each one had a prison return address in the corner and her name on the front.

Marianne put her hand flat on the top of the stack and did not move it.

"How many?" the officer asked from the doorway.

She counted them without taking them out.

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