Marydale returned to her cell while the other prisoners exercised in the yard. She asked the guard for a book, but he just laughed.
“I’ll tell room service,” he said, and closed the bars behind her.
Marydale climbed up onto her bunk and closed her eyes. There was a trick to prison, a kind of half sleep that made the hours pass. She tried to remember the exact details of the distillery, the copper-batch still, the fermenting tanks, and the bottling station. They were almost ready to bottle the Solstice Vanilla. Aldean would say it tasted too soft, a girl’s whiskey. She tried to cork the bottles in her mind. Aldean would fill. She would insert the stopper with the Sadfire logo facing the label, pull a strip of sealing tape over the top, polish the bottle, place it in a crate. She went through the process again.
She was almost asleep when she heard Gulu whisper, Scholar, we missed you. She couldn’t tell if it was a real voice or if Gulu was calling to her from another part of the prison. She might be only a few feet away in the cell above Marydale’s, or she could be at the far end of the block or outside. Marydale felt like she could hear everything. The guards laughing. The zip of a folded note being whisked from cell to cell on a thread. The air-handling system. Sometimes she thought she could hear cars on the road outside the prison, but she knew it couldn’t be true. She tried to focus on the imaginary bottles, to blot out everything else, but the harder she tried, the more she heard Gulu’s voice in her head. She’s not coming, Scholar. You’re never getting out of here.
“Get up, Rae.”
The other women were coming back from the yard, but the guard outside her cell wasn’t looking for them.
“I’m guessing you won’t mind a field trip.” It was one of the older guards, a skinny man with silver hair. He was the kind of guard who had to keep order with a calm word and a look not his bulk or his boom. Marydale liked him as much as she could like anything in Holten. “You got a visitor. Hurry up,” he said. “It’s almost count. Don’t keep everyone waiting.”
She struggled to her feet. The guard let her out of her cell. Walking down the central hall, Marydale looked for Gulu without turning her head. A moment later, she was in a small conference room with a little table and two chairs.
The guard took a pair of handcuffs out of a pocket in his uniform. “Sorry,” he said.
A window in the door faced the corridor outside, and Marydale caught her reflection in its glass. The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised. Her hair hung limp. She tried to brush it with her fingers, but the handcuffs hampered her movements. She pinched her cheek to bring a little color into her face and heard her mother’s voice. A girl can always do something.
The air felt close. She could hear the hands of a clock ticking somewhere in the hallway. Deep inside the building she heard a siren start up, like the angry wail of a business alarm in some rundown strip mall. On and on it blared, until it became a part of the silence itself, and she wondered if it had been sounding since she arrived at Holten.
Finally, the door opened, and Marydale released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. It was Kristen, led by the silver-haired guard.
Kristen looked beautiful, her blouse buttoned to the top button, her double-breasted blazer almost military in its precision. Marydale wanted to weep, and she wanted to fall at Kristen’s feet and cling to her knees and beg, Love me.
“Are the handcuffs really necessary?” Kristen asked the guard, her voice cool and professional.
“It’s a precaution.”
“Is it a requirement?”
“Not strictly.”
“Then I’d like you to remove them, please. We’ve got a lot of paperwork to go through. It’ll be easier.”
The guard withdrew a metal lanyard from his pants pocket and unlocked the cuffs. Marydale rubbed her wrists, her eyes following the guard as he closed the door behind them. The lock clicked into place, and they stared at each other.
“I…” Marydale began. “What about DataBlast? Aren’t you supposed to be in court?”
“It’s taken care of.”
Marydale glanced around the tiny room. She drew in a breath to say something, but words escaped her.
“Come on,” Kristen went on. “Let’s talk about your case.”
Marydale recounted her arrest, Holten’s arrival, and her fight with Gulu.
“Ronald Holten. The director of parole.” Kristen’s face was calm, but her hand was clamped in a fist. “I’ve found an administrative rule against a victim’s family member overseeing a parolee, and I’ve written to the parole board and called them. I’m waiting to hear back. We’ll sue if we have to.”
“He hates me,” Marydale said. “I guess he should.”
“No,” Kristen said. “He shouldn’t. No one should.”
“I did it,” Marydale said quietly.
“It was self-defense. Why didn’t you appeal at the time?”
“Eric, my lawyer, he said I wouldn’t win an appeal. I trusted him. Why would he lie? How could all those people on the jury be wrong?” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I understand that I had a right to do what I did because Aaron was going to hurt me, but back then….” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I always tried to make the best of everything. I don’t know how I can do that now. Gulu’s going to hang me.” She covered her mouth. She felt the room closing in on her. Gulu would get another inmate to say Marydale had touched her. Gulu would fashion a little packet of baking soda cut with just enough cocaine to test positive…
Kristen leaned forward. “We’re going to get through this.”
“Everything gets so small in here.” Marydale was thinking of the little notes shuttling back and forth between the cells. They said nothing. A few expletives. A curse against the guards. Marydale closed her eyes.
“I walked out of court,” Kristen said.
Marydale’s eyes flew open. “What?”
She reached across the table and grabbed Kristen’s hands.
“I drove straight over,” Kristen said. “I had to see you. I told Donna to finish DataBlast.”
“But you were going to make partner.”
Kristen glanced over her shoulder at the narrow window in the door behind her. She squeezed Marydale’s hands and then let go.
“I’m not leaving Tristess until I leave with you. I’ll think of something, and if you have to stay here, this time I’ll stay, too.”