Condemned by My Sister novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Lifer

The interview room was the same bare box with the steel table where Garner had lied to my sister's face.

This time Marianne did not sit down first.

She waited by the wall with her coat buttoned to her chin.

A woman in a plain blazer stood beside her with a notebook.

The woman was a detective, and Marianne had called her at dawn.

The door opened, and a guard brought Garner in.

He walked slowly, with his chains clinking.

His eyes were red, and he looked ten years older than he had the last time he sat in this room.

He sat down and put his cuffed hands on the table.

"You came," he said.

"You called," said Marianne.

"A guard told me on the block that the kid was dead."

"Said he died alone in some room with a towel on his face."

His jaw worked.

"I don't have much I'm proud of, Ms. Thurlow. But I never wanted that."

"Then tell me what you did want," Marianne said.

The detective clicked her pen.

Garner looked at the table for a long time.

"A man came to visit me, the second year," he said. "He said he was a friend of the family."

"What did he look like?"

"A cousin, he said. He gave me a name I didn't believe."

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