On his hard cot, Willie hovers in the space between wakefulness and sleep, his mind drifting from that cold, frosty morning when he was young to the afternoon he shared the memory with Grace: the tall grass around them, the rough bark of a tree against his back, the heat of the dappled sunlight filtering through leaves, the sound of the bullfrogs in the bayou, the touch of her hand on his neck flooding him with a rush of feeling so powerful it ached.
He opens his eyes, thinking he’d give anything to feel that ache again. But in here, he is numb to everything but waves of grief, guilt, and fear. He blinks. Eighteen bars to his cell. Ten bars across the window. Six water stains on the ceiling. One hundred twenty tiles to the floor. The rate of dripping from the leaky sink varies, but always the faucet drips. It will continue to drip even after midnight, when he is dead.
He lets his eyes blur. Eight months here have felt longer than all the life he’d lived before. He remembers that life, but he can’t remember how it felt to live it. He knows that he came home to warm food and a soft bed, but he can’t taste his mother’s cooking or feel the give of a mattress beneath his weight. He knows that he liked to go barefoot in mud, but he can’t feel the slick wet between his toes. He knows that he held Grace in his arms, but he can’t feel her warmth and weight, can’t summon that overwhelming ache—the irresistible ache of love, which led them to their fates. It’s like the memory of pain once pain has subsided. It’s a memory. The pain is gone.