Intervention
Caroline Taylor
Dearest Younger Sister,
I know you didn’t mean to do it. I’m just trying to understand. Wallace is quite upset, as I’m sure you can imagine. Nobody wants a criminal in the family. He claims he can barely hold his head up around town. Like some nineteenth-century paterfamilias, he has forbidden me to contact you. Thus, the Charlotte postmark.
I’ve been told I may not visit you unless you okay it. Will you?
We haven’t been close, I know. But I truly want to understand what happened. The trial was a joke, in my opinion. Your legal representation was ineffective. Even Wallace agrees with me on that point.
Speaking of whom, please reply to the post office box number on the return address. In case they didn’t give you the envelope, it’s P.O. Box 390, Charlotte, NC 28201.
I look forward to seeing you. It has been too long.
—Your always older sister, Lucy
Lucinda—
After all this time? You must be joking. Go crawl back under your rock and don’t bother me again.
—Martha
Dear Marty,
To borrow your own words, “after all this time,” you still hate me? Surely you have more important things to concern you than whatever grudge you’re clinging to. I know I haven’t been the best sister, and I apologize if that has hurt your feelings. I have always felt I needed to look after you, especially when it comes to things Mom and Dad aren’t aware of. I can’t help wanting to do whatever I can to clear your name and get you out of there.
It can’t be pleasant for you. In fact, I imagine it’s quite horrible. I don’t want you to suffer. So please let me visit. I really need to understand what happened and why.
The official version—that you deliberately dropped your hair dryer in the bathtub—just doesn’t fly with me. You might have some serious problems, but you’re no killer. Was it an accident? If so, why didn’t the jury believe you?
You can still reach me at the Charlotte post office box.
—Your loving sister, Lucy
Dear Martha,
It has been three months and no word from you. I called the correctional facility and discovered that you still haven’t put my name on your approved visitors’ list.
I might have been a bit too frank when I told you I didn’t think Tony was the right man for you. But don’t imagine that Wallace was influencing me. He wasn’t. Although he, too, thought Tony was not, as he put it, “our kind of people.” If Tony had family here or at least somewhere else in the South, we would have been able to ease our qualms a bit. The wise-guy accent alone was off-putting, and the way he acted around you was disgusting—like you were nothing but bimbo arm candy. You might have been blinded by love, but the rest of us—including Mom and Dad, by the way—thought he came straight out of central casting for The Godfather. What else were we to think about an Italian from New Jersey?
That’s why I’m on your side, Marty. I think it’s more than plausible that Tony was the kind of male chauvinist pig who always has to be in charge. Given your personal issues, it’s easy to imagine that you maybe weren’t paying enough attention to him. His poor, fragile ego couldn’t take it, and so he played tough guy with you. Made your life miserable. Was that what happened?
Please, Marty, let me come and visit. Mom and Dad want to know how you are doing. They’re too far away and too old to travel all the way to New Jersey. They’re wondering if you’re being offered treatment. We all hope so.
Please.
—Lucinda
Lucinda—
Treatment! Fuck you. All of you. You think I’m some kind of addict? Get real. And, while you’re at it, go to hell.
DO NOT PASS GO.
DO NOT write to me!
Dear Martha,
I’m only trying to understand, sis. If you didn’t kill him, why are you locked up? Was there somebody else? A jealous girlfriend, maybe?
—L
Bitch. Tony might have had his faults, but he was not cheating on me. Now, do me a favor and GET LOST.
Dear Martha,
Dad is begging me to visit you. Mom cries all the time. Her hair has turned totally white from all the stress. Dad could have a coronary any day, he worries so much. They think you’ve been railroaded, that Tony was indeed mobbed up, and his pals bribed some jurors to vote for conviction. Dad says that happens all the time in New Jersey. Or maybe the Mob bribed your lawyer to mount that shitty defense.
I would much rather talk this over with you face to face, but if you won’t let me visit, I will continue to write. I truly believe that if you’re innocent, you should be doing everything possible to clear your name.
Please let me help.
—Lucinda
Bossy Older Sister,
What part of FUCK OFF don’t you understand?
Dearest Younger Sister,
I have hired an investigator to look at the trial record and see if there were any irregularities or anything else that might help you. Wallace doesn’t know this and would not approve. I haven’t told Mom or Dad either. I don’t want to get their hopes up.
—Your loving older sister, Lucinda
L—
You might think you have my best interests at heart, but you seem to have forgotten what a lousy character witness you were! Dragging up all that old stuff from the past. Just because you were too goody-good to shoplift something you really, really had to have didn’t mean you had to rat me out. And so what if I didn’t ever return stuff to the library? Does that make me a murderer? Thanks to you, the jury certainly thought so.
Leave me alone.
—M
Martha—
I didn’t have a choice! I was under oath, sworn to tell the truth. How was I to know the prosecutor would drag up all that old business? If I had lied—and believe me, I was tempted—I’d be in prison, too! Imagine what that would do to Mom and Dad.
If you blame me for your predicament, Marty, at least let me help you.
—Lucy
You can’t.
—M
Marty—
Don’t be so defeatist, sis. We can fix this, but we need to meet. I could bring Cameron with me. He’s the investigator I hired. He’d like to hear your version of events. Then maybe he can take this thing further than that fool you had for a lawyer.
Wallace is going to California for a Mercedes dealers’ convention in a couple of weeks. The timing would be perfect for me to visit you, and Wallace would never find out.
Please say you’ll see me. Cameron, too. In case you need it for the prison officials, his full name is Cameron Bondurant (yes, those Bondurants), and he’s a licensed private investigator with a law degree to boot. Anytime the week of March 13 will work.
See you soon?
—Your hopeful sister, Lucy
Dear Meddler,
Save your money. Not to mention your marriage.
Did it never occur to you that maybe I deserve being here? You see, I’m really not sure if I dropped the hair dryer on purpose or not. I was clearly not in my right mind. In fact, I was going ape shit. Tony accused me of neglecting him. He decided he was going to “cure me or die trying.” (His words.) I told him there was nothing to cure. I even got down on my hands and knees and begged him to understand where I’m coming from. But he was absolutely heartless.
He locked my Kindle in the gun safe. It had Sarah Paretsky’s latest on it! He took my phone away, wouldn’t let me order anything from Amazon. He wouldn’t even go in to work just so he could keep an eye on me twenty-four/seven. That’s how he managed to keep me away from Farley’s Bookshop while they were having a three-for-one sale of Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, and Patricia Cornwell. I’ve never had to go three whole days without anything to read. You’ve always had this crazy idea that I’m suffering from some kind of addiction. Not true. In fact, you and Mom and Dad will never understand one simple thing about me: BOOKS ARE MY LIFE.
Luckily, they seem to get it here at Edna Mahan Correctional. I even have a job in the library.