Death Row novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: What the First Wife Knew

They put me back in my own cell at one in the morning.

The bunk was the same, and the sink, and the grate.

I had not expected to be glad of any of it.

I lay on my back and did not sleep.

At two, three soft knocks came through the vent.

"Leah?"

"I'm here."

"I heard the officers talking." Dorrie's voice was a thread. "They said you're alive."

"I'm alive."

"Say it again."

"I'm alive, Dorrie."

She cried then, for a long time, and I didn't tell her to stop.

When she could speak, she said, "Did she tell? Marlene? About the ring?"

"In front of everyone. She said it's Neil's wedding ring. He took it off before the truck."

"I know," Dorrie whispered. "The jeweler put our initials inside his band. I'd know it anywhere."

"You'll get it back."

"I don't want it." She sniffed. "I want to put it in front of that woman and watch her look at it."

"You will."

"Leah?"

"Yes."

"Thank you for saying his name."

"It was your idea."

"It was a good idea," Dorrie said, and then she was humming, and in the dark I started to laugh.

Evan came for me at nine.

He wasn't in the booth.

An officer walked me to the small room off the visitors' hall where lawyers meet their clients, the one with a table and no glass.

I had not sat at a table with a person in six years.

Evan was there with a woman I had never seen.

She was about fifty-five, in a plain blue coat, with gray in her hair and a cardboard folder in both hands.

She stood up when I came in.

"Ms. Marwick, this is a friend of Detective Hauck," Evan said. "She drove through the night to meet you."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Death Row from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.