I Took His Prison Sentence. Now He Begs. novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: Odessa Comes Home
Odessa came up the dock ramp on Friday in a wheelchair that Ben had borrowed from the harbor clinic.
She wore a soft gray cardigan instead of prison gray, and her silver hair was down on her shoulders for the first time in four years.
She looked like somebody's grandmother.
She looked at the house on its pilings, the gulls on the rail and the tide going out, and she did not say anything for a long time.
"Well," she said at last. "It's smaller than I imagined."
"Ma."
"I like it." Her blue eyes found mine. "You put a plant in the window."
"It was dying," I said. "I thought we'd keep each other company."
She laughed, and it turned into a cough, and Ben was kneeling at her side with a glass of water before the sound had ended.
We got her inside and settled in the chair by the kitchen window, with a blanket over her knees.
The crew had left a casserole on the counter and a card with nine signatures.
Odessa read the card twice.
"Sit," she said to us. "Both of you. I've waited four years for this, and I'd like to say it before I lose my breath."
Ben sat across from her.
I stood by the stove with my arms around myself.
"You too, girl."
I sat.
She looked at the two of us, side by side, and her face softened and then hardened.
"I'm going to tell you why I did what I did," she said. "And neither one of you is going to like me for it."
"Ma, you don't have to."
"I do."
She folded her hands.
"The day Annika died, I was in the yard at Marrow Creek, hanging laundry. A guard told me at three o'clock. I'd had eight years left to do for a debt ring, and I stood there with a sheet in my hands and I thought, I'll find who did this, and I'll kill them."
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