I Prepared for My Wedding, Only to Be Shut Out of My Own Bridal Suite novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Last Meeting

I showed the letter to Cooper on the swing.

He read it and handed it back.

"Are you going?"

"I don't know."

"Whatever you decide," he said, "I'll drive. And I'll wait in the parking lot and eat bad vending machine crackers."

"You don't have to."

"I like bad crackers."

I went on a Thursday in September.

The visiting room at the county jail was long and bright, with a row of plastic chairs facing a row of thick windows.

A phone hung on the wall at every window.

A woman two chairs down was showing a drawing to a man on the other side of the glass, holding it up flat so he could see.

A little boy beside her was kicking the chair leg.

They brought Mason in through a steel door at the far end.

He was in an orange jumpsuit, with his hair cut short.

He'd lost weight.

The gold watch was gone.

He sat down across from me and picked up his phone.

I picked up mine.

For a second neither of us said anything.

"You came," he said.

"You said you had one thing left to say."

He nodded.

He looked down at the counter, then back up at me.

"Sentencing is December fourteenth," he said. "My lawyer says letters help. From people who knew me before. People who can say I'm not... this."

He gestured at the jumpsuit.

"Mom wrote one. But she's... Nobody listens to Mom anymore."

"You want me to write you a letter."

"You knew me seven years, Claire. Longer than anyone except her. If you said I was a good man who made mistakes, the judge would listen. Everyone saw you at the gala. You're the one people believe now."

I looked at him through the glass.

This was the one thing.

Not sorry. Not the eighty-four thousand.

Not the night in 612.

"That's what you wanted to say?" I said.

"I'm asking for help." His voice cracked. "I'm asking you. I don't have anyone else."

"You have a baby, Mason."

He looked away.

"Kelsey won't let me see him."

"Him."

"It's a boy." He swallowed. "Due in December. Same week as sentencing."

I didn't say anything.

I watched him wait for me to feel sorry for him.

I could see him counting the seconds, the way he'd counted them in the hallway.

"No," I said.

"Claire..."

"I'm not writing a letter. I'm not coming to the hearing. I'm not going to say a word about you to anybody, good or bad, ever again."

I hung up the phone.

He was still talking on the other side of the glass.

I couldn't hear him.

I stood up, pushed in my chair, and walked out without looking back.

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