Death Row novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Forgiveness Visit

Evan's boss won't file on a resemblance. Marlene comes to forgive Leah, brings a photograph of the lake house, and leaves with a whisper through the glass: he says you were the best one.

Evan came back the next morning with bad news and a coffee he didn't drink.

"My director says it's a resemblance," he said. "A woman and a man who both lost husbands in fires, and a photograph with a beard difference. She won't put the clinic's name on a petition that says a dead man is alive."

"Then put yours on it."

"I did. She said if I filed it, I'd lose the job."

"Are you going to file it?"

He took his glasses off and set them on the counter.

"Yes."

I had not expected that, and I didn't know what to say.

"The clemency hearing is in four days, five days before the date," he said. "By video. The board hears me for twenty minutes, then the family, then they vote."

"The family," I said.

"Mr. Fell and his sister have both asked to speak."

Of course they had.

"Evan, can you see the video room from where you'll be?"

"I'll be in the room with them."

"Then watch his hands."

He put the glasses back on.

"That's the strangest thing a client has ever asked me to do," he said.

"It's the only thing I'm asking."

When he left, an officer stood waiting at the end of the corridor with her arms crossed.

"Marwick, you have another visitor," she said. "Victim's family. They've got a program. A sister who wants to forgive you before the date."

I didn't move.

For six years I had waited for someone from that family to say anything to my face.

"Did she ask for me by name?"

"Marlene Fell. You want it or not?"

My hands were shaking and I pressed them flat against my thighs.

Calm wins.

Blaine had said it so many times that I could still hear his voice saying it.

All right, I thought. Then I will use it.

"I want it," I said.

The booth was the same one Evan had left.

Marlene sat on the other side of the glass in a black wool coat, with her dark hair brushed back and her eyes already wet.

She picked up the phone before I did.

"Leah," she said softly. "Thank you for seeing me."

She looked thinner than at the trial.

She had a ring on a thin chain at her throat, and she touched it while she spoke.

"I know how it must look," she said. "Me, here, after what I said about you in that courtroom. I told the truth as I understood it. I need you to know I've never stopped praying for you."

I kept my face the way I'd kept it at every hearing.

"Thank you," I said.

"Blaine loved you so much."

"He did."

"I was so angry for so long," Marlene said. "I wanted you to suffer. Then last winter I woke up and knew I couldn't carry it anymore. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think I do."

She smiled at me through the glass, a sad, grateful smile.

I had trusted that smile completely.

She had brought me a casserole the week Blaine and I moved into the lake house.

She had held my hair back the morning I had the flu.

I had called her my sister.

"I brought you something," she said.

She lifted a flat envelope and held it up to the glass.

"The officer has to look at it first. It's a picture."

The officer checked it and slid it through the slot.

It was a photograph of the three of us on the dock at the lake house, the summer after the wedding.

Blaine sat in the middle, his arms around both of us, squinting in the sun.

I looked happy in it, and I had been.

"I thought you should have one nice thing," Marlene said. "I found it in a box."

"Where is Dean?" I said.

Her face didn't change.

"In the car. He can't look at you yet. I hope you'll understand. He's very grieved."

"I thought Blaine only had you."

"Dean is our younger brother. He's lived overseas for years. You never met him."

She said it in the same soft voice, and I could not find a crack in it.

"I'm sorry I screamed at him," I said.

"Oh, honey, it's all right. Grief makes everyone see things."

She tapped the counter twice with two fingers.

She did not look down.

She did not know she had done it.

Something went down my arms and left me completely steady.

It was the first time in six years I wasn't afraid of her.

"I'll pray for you too, Marlene," I said.

She stood up and hung up the phone.

But she didn't leave yet.

She leaned in close to the glass, so close her breath fogged it, and she said something I couldn't hear.

I read it off her lips, slowly, one word at a time.

"He says you were the best one."

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