Death Row novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Pipes

By morning every woman on the row knew what I'd done in the lobby.

News moves through a death row faster than it moves anywhere else, because nobody here has anything else to do with it.

At breakfast the woman who knits looked at me across the table and said, "I heard you finally got loud."

"I did."

"Good," she said, and went back to her oatmeal.

In the dayroom after that, I did something I hadn't done in three years.

I carried my tray to Dorrie's table and sat down across from her.

We had always talked through the wall, never in the open.

It had seemed safer.

Dorrie had her cards laid out in rows and her braid over one shoulder.

Her eyes were red around the edges, but her hands were steady.

She dealt a card to herself and murmured, without looking up, "Don't stare at me. Stare at the cards."

I looked at the cards.

"I've got something for you," she said. "Take the next one when I turn it."

She slid a queen of hearts across the table with two fingers.

Something thin was folded small beneath it.

I took the card and the paper together, put them under my tray, and opened the paper on my knee.

It was a newspaper clipping, soft from years of being folded.

COUNTY WOMAN SENTENCED IN HUSBAND'S TRUCK FIRE.

Below the headline was a courtroom photograph, taken from the back.

A row of spectators, and on the end a woman in a black dress with her head bowed.

Her hair was light brown and cut to her chin.

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