Chapter 21: Thanksgiving

"Last Thursday," I said.

"Signed in at ten. Out at ten-forty." The guard shut the drawer. "Have a good day, ma'am."

I walked out to the lot with the envelope against my chest.

Cormac was out of the truck before I reached it.

"She was here," I said. "A week ago. Before me. She put two hundred dollars on his account."

He looked at the envelope.

"And he still gave you those."

"He still gave me these."

We sat in the truck with the heat running and read all five letters, one at a time, out loud.

"You were only supposed to mark her face."

"Keep your mouth shut about me and I'll put money on your books every month."

"Nobody will believe a junkie over a waitress with a hurt friend."

Then I folded them back into the envelope, very carefully.

My lawyer copied them that afternoon and locked the originals in her safe, next to Winifred's amendment.

She sent the copies to the district attorney.

A detective went to Norfolk two weeks later.

The man told him he didn't remember writing to anybody and didn't remember any letters, and asked to go back to his cell.

Two hundred dollars.

"The letters are still the letters," my lawyer said. "Her handwriting doesn't change because he's got a bad memory."

Thanksgiving came on a Thursday, the way it does.

Margo was with me. Bradford had asked for the day, and the judge's order said weekends, and I'd written him back:

No.

I cooked for twenty-two in the firehouse kitchen.

Two turkeys, because the big guy said one turkey was a rumor.

Cornbread stuffing. Green beans. Mashed potatoes with a whole stick of butter folded in. Six pies from the bakery.

Cormac was banned from the stove.

"I'm very good with a knife," he said.