Six

The week before the shooting Jake’s father had sent him to Florida, ostensibly to see another trainer about a horse her grandfather was thinking of buying, but Leigh wasn’t so sure. For weeks Jake’s jobs for his dad had been taking him farther and farther away, to meet with people in parking lots and under bridges, dicey prospects that had Leigh worried sick. She had begged him not to go, said she was afraid of some of the men his father sent him to see, but Jake said it would be all right, he’d be safe and home in no time.

“Anyway, you don’t know the people I’m going to talk to,” he said, his voice taking on a hard edge of defensiveness. She knew he didn’t like it when she criticized his dad or Dale. “These men, they’re hard workers. Horsemen. They know things about the business. Things that will help all of us.”

“I know things about the business, too,” Leigh said, her voice rising. “I’ve been around horses all my life. I’m in the barn the same as you. I feed, I muck the same as you.”

“Not the same as me,” Jake said quietly.

“I don’t trust some of your dad’s ‘business associates,’ Jake. I don’t think you should either.”

“I have to,” he said. “You don’t understand. My dad’s the best trainer in the business. He knows what he’s doing. If I could have half the success my father has, I’ll think I’ve really made it.” He raked his hand through his dark curly hair, making it stand up black in the summer heat. “Just trust me, okay? Can you do that much?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Not when it comes to Ben. You have blinders on, Jake. I don’t know what’s happening, but I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it, but just please, don’t do anything foolish.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Just keep your distance from my dad, and Dale. Don’t pick any fights. They’re already jumpy. It’s just for a little while longer, until we can get out of here.”

Leigh had walked off in a huff. But she wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “Fine,” she said. “Go on to Florida. See if I care.”

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t get angry. It’s just something I have to do.”

“Yes, well,” she said, “this is just something I have to do.” And she kept walking.

She expected him to come after her as she crossed the yard and went into the house, but he didn’t try to stop her. She sat inside all afternoon, waiting, until she finally saw his truck pull out of the half-moon driveway not long before supper. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t come after her, that he had left anyway.

She played the scene over again and again in her mind. Maybe she should not have been so bitter about it. Maybe she should have apologized. She trusted his judgment, didn’t she? But it was too late—he’d already left.

Jake was gone for nearly a week, a week with no calls, no messages. Nothing. Leigh had fretted the whole time, worried that something might happen to him on the road, that she wouldn’t get a chance to talk to him, to apologize. Every moment without him left her with a physical ache of regret and worry.

It was unusually hot that May, and Leigh had been cranky and restless, unable to enjoy the graduation parties, the talk of the colleges her friends were heading to, the jobs they were taking. Whenever anyone asked her about Harvard, she froze, then did her best to sound nonchalant about the subject, bored even, like it was yesterday’s news. No one—not even Chloe—knew that she and Jake planned to get married the day she turned eighteen at the end of June, that Jake was coming with her to Boston. The slightest whiff of their plans and her grandfather would fire Ben Rhodes, send him away, and God only knew where they’d go or when she’d see Jake after that.

On the day Jake had promised to be back, Leigh rushed home after school. She ran to the barn to see if he was there, but when she looked in the tack room, in the feed room, in the hayloft, she was greeted by nothing but dust and the quizzical looks of the many farmhands who worked for her grandfather.

The old man, too, was distracted—he had the vet out again, the third time in two months, to put down a young colt, one of the farm’s most promising yearlings, because one of the horse’s back legs had come up lame after his last practice. Nothing anyone had tried had done any good. The colt was damaged.

With two injections, the vet put him down. Her grandfather was heartbroken. “Damn,” he said, stroking the horse’s brown neck as his breathing slowed, then stopped. “The best one of the lot, too.”

“I’m sorry, Pop,” Leigh said. She knew how hard he took the loss of any one of his horses. She hesitated, folded her arms. She wanted to mourn the colt but had other things on her mind. She couldn’t ask her grandfather if he’d seen Jake—the old man would take her head off for sure.

Instead she kept looking for him in the tractor garage, the practice ring. Frustrated, she made the mistake of heading into the breeding shed, where Dale Tucker was setting up for one of the mares to be covered by the stud, Blizzard, Leigh’s own childhood pet, now among her grandfather’s best horses.

Leigh had seen Dale standing inside, and hesitated. The two of them had never seen eye to eye about the horses; she thought he was too rough with them, ran them too hard and too often, but whenever she spoke to him about it, he only said, “Thank you, Your Highness,” and went back to doing just as he pleased. Since he worked for her grandfather, not her, there wasn’t much she could do to get rid of him, but she’d taken to avoiding him over the years, tried not to speak to him unless she had no other choice. She always remembered the way he looked at her that first day he’d arrived on the ranch, when she’d arrived braless and soaking wet from her afternoon swim. As if he were sizing her up for sale, or worse.

That day, as she poked her head in the big double doors of the breeding shed, she saw no one except Dale holding the mare’s bridle, waiting for Ben to bring Blizzard in from his pen. Dale saw her at the same time as the mare, who whinnied a greeting. Leigh froze with one foot turned in flight, but it was too late.

Dale tugged on the mare’s rope and gave Leigh an evil grin. “Hear that?” he said. “She’s all ready for it. Ready for the stud to come in and give it to her. Likes it rough, too. Soon as the old boy comes in, she’ll be raring to go, won’t she?”

Leigh had stood very still, like a rabbit sensing a fox. Somehow Dale had thought having a secret over Leigh—knowing the truth about her and Jake—gave him the right to talk to her like that. For more than a year she’d been listening to taunts like this from him, had grown to hate and distrust the sight of him, his filthy baseball caps that read FBI: FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR, and DON’T BE SEXIST! BITCHES HATE THAT. The heavy smell of his cheap cologne. His eyes, looking her up and down. Leigh had held her head up and turned to go, but Dale came up close to her, came closer than he had any right to. The smell of his sweat and the tobacco on his breath was so overpowering she nearly gagged.

She stepped back. “Do you mind?”

Dale stepped in closer, his breath hot, his small, piglike eyes burning into her. “What’s the matter? Don’t like me as much as that boy of yours? He’s just a kid. If you want to learn the ropes, you’ll need a man.”

“I’ll be sure to let you know when I see one.”

“Oh, you’re seeing one, all right,” said Dale. He leaned into her, so close their noses almost touched. Leigh refused to give an inch, to back down to this disgusting excuse for a man.

“I think you like what you see, too,” Dale said, reaching down to cup his hand around her breast.

For one long moment he stood there with his filthy hand on her. Leigh looked around, but there was no one; they were completely alone. The only person who might come in was Ben, and he wouldn’t side with her, not against his own partner. She knew enough about Ben to know that he hated her, hated that Jake loved her, that her grandfather had threatened his job because of her. No—she was on her own with Dale Tucker.

She pushed him back with two hands against his chest, spooking the mare.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “No one’s here. No one will see.”

She took two steps back and said, “You keep your hands off me.”

He laughed. “You think you can just walk away? If I want you, I’ll take you, and there won’t be a damn thing you can do to stop me.”

She was trying to think, to look around for a weapon, for something. Her grandfather’s gun was far away, back in the tack room of the barn. Might as well be a million miles. “I would stop you,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’d kill you if I had to.”

He laughed. “You couldn’t hurt me. You’re a good girl. You’ll take it all, and it will be so sweet. You’re gonna like it so much, you’ll thank me afterward.”

“Not in a million years.”

He kept coming, closer and closer. She started to realize she might have to fight him off with her bare hands, that even as short as he was, it wouldn’t take much for him to overpower her. She should never have come to the shed alone. She should never have thought she was safe.

She was backing toward the door now. It would all be okay as long as she got out, got back to the house.

But Dale couldn’t resist one last gibe: “Where’re you going, honey?” he asked. “Show’s just about to start. I know you’re just dying to stay around and watch.” She backed up slowly. “No? Then I guess I’ll be seeing you later.” She took off to the sound of his harsh laughter.

She’d gone back to the house feeling shaken to her core, sitting alone in her room in tears, angry that a man like Dale Tucker had felt so free to put his hands on her, that he’d looked at her and spoken to her like she was something he owned. She couldn’t go to her grandfather and tell him what had happened; Dale would surely tell Gene about Leigh and Jake. No—she’d have to deal with Dale Tucker on her own.

All afternoon and into the evening Leigh sat in the window watching the half-moon driveway, where Jake would pull up when he came home. Her room seemed to get smaller and smaller, the world outside bigger and bigger, when she thought of Jake alone out in that world, all the things that could happen to him before they had a chance to make up. A carjacking. An accident. Jake trapped in a ditch in his overturned truck for days and days. And she could admit it—she felt naked without him there, standing between herself and a man like Dale Tucker. If Jake had been there, Dale would never have touched her, not in a million years.

When he wasn’t home by dinner, she was nervous; by midnight, when he still hadn’t returned, she was terrified. Something had happened. Where are you, Jake? she wondered. Why aren’t you home? She vowed that next day, first thing, she was buying him a cell phone no matter how much he objected.

Not long after midnight, when her room was so close and small that she felt suffocated, Leigh at last saw the lights of Jake’s truck heading into the driveway and coming to rest outside the stables. She watched him climb out of the cab and open the barn door, slipping inside in darkness. The moon was up, and as she raised the sash on her window and climbed out of the house, she could see her own shadow on the grass. She crossed the yard toward the open door of the barn, dark and yawning like a mouth.

When she came close she heard an argument in progress, something angry from Jake, another voice answering. The two voices were lowered, nearly whispering, but there was no mistaking the hostility in them. She crept closer to listen. “I don’t care. I don’t care what you do to me anymore, I’m done. I’m finished with this, Dale, I mean it,” Jake was saying, and Dale Tucker answered, “You’re not done till we say you’re done. You’re not done, or you know what comes next.”

“I don’t care anymore. I’m telling Leigh everything. I’m telling her tonight.”

Dale laughed. “You wouldn’t dare, because you know how pissed she’ll be. She’ll never speak to you again.”

“She will. She trusts me.”

“Oh yeah, she trusts you, all right. That girl doesn’t know the first thing about what’s going on here. What do you think she’ll do if you tell her? Think she’ll thank you? Think she’ll still open up her long legs for you then?”

Leigh froze. They didn’t hear her. They didn’t know she was there. What was really going on here? What had Jake been holding back?

Dale thought he was safe, so he kept talking. “If you want to start your own training business someday, you’ll keep quiet. You spill your guts to Leigh or Gene, to anyone in this business, and no one will hire you. Your future depends on being the son of Ben Rhodes, superstar. You screw us, you’re only hurting yourself.”

“My future,” Jake said, “is none of your goddamn business. I can make my own way from now on.”

“You couldn’t make your own way on a bus, Jake. If you want to train, if you want to trade on your old man’s name, you’re going to want that name to be a good one. Remember that.”

“I don’t want to train anymore,” Jake hissed. “I don’t want to win at all costs. You’re a liar and a cheat. You and my father.” She could hear the hurt in his voice, his wounded pride. The Honorable Jacob Rhodes. She knew how much he admired his father, how he’d always looked up to him. He always said if he could have half the accomplishments his father had, he’d think his life was a success.

That admission—that his father was a liar, that Jake didn’t want to be like him anymore—must have cost him dearly. But why had he said it?

She heard a stall door open, heard the sound of something soft hitting wood—a person, maybe. Someone made a grunting noise, as if in pain. “I’m warning you,” Jake said, his voice laboring now. “Keep your goddamn hands off me. I don’t have your stuff. It’s over.”

In a minute she could see the shadow of Jake walking away, could see him trying to leave. Dale raised his voice now, seemingly not caring if anyone heard. “You little shit!” he shouted. “I’m not letting you torpedo your daddy’s whole career for a worthless piece of ass.”

“You can’t talk about Leigh like that,” Jake said, turning around.

“Why not? She can traipse around here in her wet clothes and her tight jeans like some little tramp, but no one’s supposed to notice? Don’t kid yourself, she wants us all to notice her. You and me and your dad. She’s just begging for us all to pay attention. Just because she’s fucking you in the hayloft doesn’t mean I have to bow and scrape to that little slut. I don’t care if her granddaddy owns half of Texas.”

“You don’t talk about her like that,” Jake said. “You don’t say another word against her. I’m going to marry her as soon as she turns eighteen. She’s going to be my wife, and I won’t let you talk about her like that. Not now, or ever again.”

Leigh had held on to the stall nearest her to keep from falling over. He shouldn’t have told Dale about their plans—not Dale Tucker, of all people. It was too risky; it could expose both of them.

Oh, Jake, you didn’t!

Dale had laughed, actually laughed. “Whoo, boy,” he said. “You are dumber than I thought. That little whore is never going to marry a country boy like you. You think her granddaddy’s going to will his millions to you?”

“I don’t care if he does or doesn’t,” Jake said. “It’s only Leigh I want.”

“Then you’re definitely dumber than I thought. The only reason to marry that little bitch is her granddad’s millions, Jake. She’ll break your heart faster than you can spit. She’ll be screwing everything that moves.”

“You’re just pissed I got to her first.”

Dale’s voice dropped an octave. “She should be glad you got to her first. If I’d gotten to her first, I’d knock some fucking sense into that head of hers. Now I mean it: hand over the stuff or I swear I will go straight to the house right now and tell Grandpa that you’re fucking his baby girl. Let him deal with you. If you get out of it without a bullet in your ass, it won’t be because I didn’t try.”

Leigh knew he meant it. He’d expose both of them. It would all be over. But what did Dale want that Jake had?

“I told you, I didn’t bring it. I never went to the place and picked it up.” Dale snorted. “Laugh all you want, but it’s true. I won’t be your dog anymore.”

Scuffling, grunting. The sound of fists. Jake and Dale were fighting in the darkness. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear the sound of them hitting each other, could hear Jake cry out.

“I’ll kill you,” Dale was hissing. “I will fucking kill you.”

She could see them fighting. It was dark in the barn, but she could see well enough that Jake was too much for the smaller, older man, that Jake was tall and broad and powerfully built. He swung out and caught Dale under the chin, knocking the other man into the dirt.

She watched as Dale Tucker grabbed a lead line, looped it over Jake’s neck, and pulled. Jake gave a strangled gasp and fell to his knees.

Leigh’s heart was in her ears. Jake was in trouble. She had to help. She had to save him.

She slipped around to the outside entrance to the tack room, running now. The barn was completely black, so that the two men fighting were nothing but shadows in the darkness, a blur of movement and grunting. She turned the handle of the door to the tack room, where her grandfather kept the .357. She found the gun right where her grandfather always kept it, under the pile of horse blankets on the shelf. It was loaded. It was always loaded—Gene said an unloaded gun was no better than a baseball bat.

Holding it low at her side, she opened the tack room door into the barn. The fight had spilled out into the aisle of the barn. She could see their shapes, but could barely make out who was who. Dale Tucker was nearly a head shorter than Jake, wearing his dirty old trucker hat even in the dark, but he was muscular, strong, nearly as wide as he was tall. Jake was kneeling, and Dale had the rope tight around his throat, squeezing, his other hand pulling Jake’s arms behind his back at an angle that looked so painful Leigh nearly cried out.

“Give me the stuff, you pussy-whipped little shit! I know you have it!”

“Fuck. Off.” Jake’s voice was nothing but a hoarse whisper, the air nearly squeezed out of him.

Leigh raised the gun to sight at Dale’s head. She cocked the weapon, a loud metallic clicking, unmistakable even in the dark. Both men froze.

“Step back,” Leigh said, her voice quavering in fear, or anger, or both at once. “Get your hands off him, Dale. I may be nothing but a worthless piece of ass, but you know as well as I do that my rich granddaddy taught me how to use this gun.”

Dale let go of the rope around Jake’s neck and stepped away. “Well, look at this,” he said, his voice dripping sour honey. “Mommy’s come to break up the fight. Jake, you didn’t tell me you called for your mommy.”

“He didn’t. I came looking for him and heard you talking garbage about me.”

Jake was lying on the floor, gasping, but at least he was breathing again.

“Honestly, sweetheart, I didn’t know you were here. If I had, I might have said some things different.”

The gun was heavy in her hands. She’d never aimed one at a person before—she’d shot at cans along a fence line, once at a bunch of coyotes that were harassing some of the horses—but she’d never felt the adrenaline rush into her veins the way she did now, the throb of her own power.

As Leigh pointed the gun straight into Dale Tucker’s eyes, words flooded her brain. Every nasty thing he’d said to her, every disgusting look, it all came into razor-sharp focus. She remembered the look on his face earlier in the day, when he’d compared her to a mare in heat, just waiting for the stud to come in and ride her. She saw the self-satisfied expression he’d worn when he’d reached out and touched her breast like it was something he owned.

Now he was sneering. She could just make out his face in the dark, could just see the curl of his lip as he looked at her. Nothing but a worthless piece of ass, he’d called her, because she didn’t like him, because she’d recoiled when he touched her. She was only worthless because she wouldn’t back down to someone like him.

“You tell your boyfriend about today?” Dale said. “How you took it in the breeding shed like a good little bitch?”

She watched Jake’s head snap up. That had caught his attention, like Dale had wanted.

“The only thing that happened in the breeding shed today,” she said, “was when I told you to keep your hands off me.”

“Oh, come on, now. Tell lover boy here the truth, Leigh. You wanted it. You loved it.”

“The only thing I want from you,” she said slowly, “is the sight of you walking away. Let him go, and no one gets hurt.”

“That’s not what you said this afternoon.”

“I will never,” she said, “let you put your filthy hands on me again. Not ever.”

“You will. You know you will, because you don’t dare tell Granddaddy on me. The minute you do, lover boy here is yesterday’s news. I think you’ll get down on your knees and do whatever I tell you to, just to keep ol’ Jakey here on the farm. Now, that’s a thought. We could work out a deal, a little tit for tat. That’s all it takes for me to keep my mouth shut about you and Jake. Easy as pie for a girl like you. Sound good?”

Jake was struggling to get to his feet. “If you ever . . . If you hurt her, you son of a—”

Leigh kept the gun pointed at Dale, but she could feel her hands begin to shake. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t even think about it. Not ever.

“Now let’s talk turkey,” said Dale. “What I want right now is for lover boy here to give me the stuff his daddy sent him for. If he doesn’t, then he can be sure that the next time I catch you alone, I won’t be so gentle.”

“You smug asshole. I’m the one with the gun.”

“You won’t do it. You don’t have the balls for killing, sweetheart. Might as well give me that gun right now. Come on, give it over.”

He still didn’t think she’d do it. He didn’t think she was capable of actually pulling the trigger. She held the gun steady.

“Leigh.” It was Jake now, coughing, pushing himself to his knees. “Don’t give it to him. Don’t listen to him.”

Dale was moving closer, his shadow coming at her in the dark, slowly. He held out his hand to take the gun from her. He kept talking—low, soothing—like calming a balky horse. “You angry about today, honey? All I did was give you a taste. You liked it, too, didn’t you? Been thinking about me all day?”

Her face burned, because she had been thinking about him all day. About how much she hated him, about all the ways she wanted to humiliate him, pay him back for humiliating her. And that was the point, she realized—he wanted her to hate him. He wanted her to think about him, to insinuate himself into her head, because to a man like him hatred was the most powerful aphrodisiac.

“Come on, honey,” he said. Dale was only a few feet from her now, reaching out his hand. “Come on, give me that gun. You don’t know the damage you could do with it, do you? You don’t want that. You don’t want that kind of mess in your life.”

He was close, closer, sidling up to her, moving slowly, talking low. He was coming for the gun, probably thinking to take it from her. He was enjoying his game, enjoying thinking he had the upper hand.

But he didn’t have the upper hand, because she still had the gun.

Maybe, if she’d given it to him, he would have simply put it away. Then again, maybe he would have turned it on her and then Jake. Afterward—for many years afterward—she would try to decide which it might have been. Both. Either.

What she did remember, what she dreamed about sometimes at night, was the feel of her own fear, the knowledge of another human being who wanted to do her harm. It didn’t matter that he was outnumbered. It didn’t matter that he was unarmed. It only mattered that she hated him and that she was afraid of him and that she was the one who held the gun.

In the dark she could see him coming toward her, see the broad expanse of his chest in the checkered shirt, the muscular shoulders, the curl of his lip. She’d known that afternoon in the barn that he hated her, that he wanted to hurt and humiliate her. The next time I catch you alone, I won’t be so gentle.

Her finger tightened on the trigger. A flash.

All the noise in the world seemed to coalesce around her then. The next thing she remembered the lights were on, and she was on the floor of the barn, Jake bending over her, Jake taking the gun out of her hand. He was saying something to her, something she couldn’t hear. “What?” she asked him numbly. “What, Jake?” His lips were moving, but she wasn’t understanding him. It was as if he were speaking in a foreign language, something dense and impenetrable.

“Are you hurt?” Her ears were ringing, but she could just make out Jake’s voice through a fog. “Are you shot?”

She sat up, felt her limbs and chest. Everything was where it should be. “I don’t think so,” she said.

On the ground a few feet away lay the body of Dale Tucker, a dark stain spread across the front of his shredded gray-checkered shirt. His mouth was open, and his mean little eyes were staring up at the ceiling, at nothing. She’d caught him full in the chest with a high-caliber round at close range, and it had torn through him like a stone through wet paper. A dark puddle of blood spread out from beneath him.

Jake bent over him, still holding the gun. “He’s dead.”

Leigh wrapped her arms around herself, started to shake. “Oh God,” she moaned. “God, God, I killed him.” She could hardly see. The barn started to go white around her, and she collapsed on the floor. “I killed him. I killed him, Jake.”

It was all going away—Harvard, New York, herself and Jake getting married. It was slipping through her fingers like sand. They’d take her to prison. They might even give her the chair. She felt a noise roiling in her throat, realized the keening sound she heard was her own voice.

Jake shook her. “Stop. Stop it. Look at me, Leigh. Look at my face, just my face. Breathe.” She tried to do what he said, to look in his face, to breathe, but how could she? How could she? She might as well take the gun and put it to her own head. “I’m going to jail,” she said. “I killed him. I killed him, Jake!”

“Listen to me. You didn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did. I did it. I did it.”

She was panicking, but Jake was looking around at the blood on the floor, his hands on the gun. Then he knelt next to Dale and took aim at the barn door, firing a single shot—bam—into the wood.

“What are you doing?” she screamed. “Why did you do that?”

“Powder burns,” Jake said. He took her by the shoulders and hauled her to her feet. “Listen to me, Leigh. I did it. We tell them it was me.”

“You’re crazy—”

“No, listen to me. We say we came out here to check on the gelding, the one with the lame leg. We say we heard an intruder. A thief. We went to get the gun just to warn him off. He wrestled me down to the floor and was choking me. I shot him to protect myself. We didn’t know it was Dale until we turned on the lights. It will work, I swear.”

“I can’t,” she sobbed. “It was me. It was me. They’re going to arrest me, they’re going to take me to prison. I might get the death penalty.”

“They won’t. I won’t let them.”

“I can’t, I can’t. I can’t let you do that. I did it. I did it. It was me.” She was still screaming, nearly hysterical now. “I killed him. Oh my God, Jake, what have I done!”

“Listen.” He was bending down to look in her eyes, trying to calm her, but there was a weird energy in his voice, a sense of urgency she hadn’t understood at the time. “Listen to me, Leigh. Leela, look at me.”

Her eyes snapped up.

“This is what you tell the police when they come: that we came out to the barn to check on the gelding with the lame leg. We saw a man, a horse thief. We went to get your grandfather’s gun. The man fought with me. He had me down on the ground. I fired twice. We didn’t know it was Dale until we turned the lights on. Leigh, repeat what I just said.”

“No, no, I can’t let you do that.”

Jake’s voice boomed: “Repeat to me what I just said, Leigh.” His fingers were so tight around her shoulders she nearly cried out.

Leigh felt like she was choking. The words were like ashes in her mouth. “We came to the barn to check on one of the horses. We heard an intruder and went to get the gun. We warned him. He lunged at you, and you fired, and then he had you down on the ground and was choking you. That’s when you killed him. We didn’t know it was Dale until we turned on the lights.”

“That’s it. That’s all you ever have to say.”

She was weeping now. “I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t lie.” She didn’t know where it was coming from, this determination to take the blame for something he hadn’t done, but she couldn’t think, she couldn’t even see straight. She was thinking about Harvard, about having to tell the university she’d been arrested, about her grandfather coming to visit her in jail, about police and lawyers and judges. The electric chair sizzling her flesh. It was over; it was all over, except it hadn’t even begun. “I won’t let you do this.”

“You will. It was self-defense,” he said, lifting up her chin to look him in the eyes. “I can handle a couple of weeks in jail. What I can’t handle is watching you get handcuffed and put in a squad car because I screwed up.”

“Jake—”

His face twisted in pain. “Don’t argue with me, Leigh. If it wasn’t for me, you could have gone to your grandfather and got Dale fired a long time ago. You wouldn’t even have been out here tonight if it wasn’t for me.”

“That’s not true. I—”

Then someone was shouting, someone else was in the barn. “Jesus Christ!” said a voice.

Jake pulled her close as Ben Rhodes arrived on the scene, as her grandfather came running from the house. The arrival of other people in the barn made the situation seem very real all of a sudden.

“My God,” said her grandfather. “What the hell happened here? Leigh? Leigh, are you all right?”

She held on to Jake to steady herself. “I’m okay, Pop. I’m not hurt.”

Ben was kneeling down next to his friend. “Dale,” he said. “Dale, hey, buddy.”

“He’s dead, Ben,” said her grandfather. “Nothing you can do for him now.” He looked from Leigh to Jake, who still had the gun in his hand. “You better put that gun down, Jake, and tell me what happened.”

Jake gingerly set the gun down on the floor of the barn.

“He didn’t—” Leigh started, but Jake cut her off.

“He tried to kill me. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Jacob,” said his father, “what the hell have you done? You shot Dale? You killed him?”

Gene shook his head, trying to keep things calm. “Threatening you how?”

Jake said, “I didn’t know it was Dale. We came out here to check on the gelding, the one that’s favoring his front leg. We saw someone coming out of one of the stalls with a horse, didn’t we, Leigh? I went to get the gun, just to warn him off, of course. He came at me. He wrestled me down to the ground, got his hands around my neck. He said he was going to kill me, so I shot. Isn’t that right, Leigh?”

Leigh didn’t answer. She couldn’t speak.

“That doesn’t make sense. What were you arguing about? Why would Dale say he was going to kill you?”

Jake looked over at Leigh. She opened her mouth to protest, but the look in his eyes stopped her. I’m doing this, it said. I’m doing this whether you want me to or not. “He was angry.”

“Angry about what?”

“Jake,” said his dad in a warning tone.

Jake shook his head. “He came at me. I thought he had a knife, maybe. He would have killed me if I hadn’t shot him first. He said so. He said he was going to kill me, didn’t he, Leigh?”

“Jake—” she said.

“I shot him. He said he was going to kill me. You heard him, Leigh. You heard what he said. Tell them what he said.”

“Is this true, Leela?” her grandfather asked.

This was the moment. She could have, should have told the truth right then, but something stopped her. Jake was so certain, so calm, and she was so scared—scared of hurting her grandfather, of getting Ben fired, of going to prison. Maybe he was right. Maybe what he said would work. It was self-defense, wasn’t it? Jake had the bruises on his neck to prove it. If she told the truth there would be handcuffs and confessions and jail time. She’d lose Harvard, lose her future . . .

She looked up. Her grandfather’s face was so stern, forbidding. The thought of telling him what had really happened, of explaining what Dale had said in the breeding barn, the thought of explaining how he’d put his hands on her, how he’d tried to blackmail her into sex just now—it was unbearable. Gene would have to know everything; she’d have to tell him about her and Jake, about them running away together. He’d never let her see Jake again.

Later she would know all that was an excuse. She did it because she was scared, and because Jake seemed so sure it was the right thing, the only thing.

Over her grandfather’s shoulder she could make out Jake giving her a pleading look. She took a breath and said, “He said he was going to kill Jake. He was strangling him.”

“Why would he want to kill Jake?” Gene was getting angry now. “Someone had better tell me for real what the hell’s going on here.”

Jake shook his head no. Gene stood up and said, “If you don’t explain it to me, Leigh, you’ll have to explain it to the cops.”

“Then I’ll explain it to the cops.”

Ben stood up and fixed his son with a stony glare. Probably he already knew what was going to happen, how it was going to go: that the police would find the steroids; that Ben would lose his job; that Jake would go to prison. “You have no idea what you’ve done, Jacob. You have no fucking clue.”

Under the harsh lights of the barn, his face ashen, Leigh could hear her grandfather talking to the sheriff on his cell phone, and the reality of what was happening hit her hard. Dale’s body lay on the floor of the barn, his blood pooling on the floor of the aisle, and she’d felt sick, she’d run out into the darkness to throw up in the bushes, retching over and over until her guts were empty.

“A man’s been shot,” Gene Merrill was saying. “A man’s dead at my place. You’d better send your people out right away.”

When the sheriff’s deputy arrived, Jake told the story he’d concocted about the gelding and the intruder and the two shots in the dark. Leigh had listened in a kind of stupor, her thoughts thick and slow as honey. When she thought about it later, she realized she had probably been in shock. She’d killed a man. She, Leigh Merrill, had committed a murder, and to protect her Jake had decided to tell the authorities it was him.

As he was speaking, telling the story they would both tell so many times, to police, to prosecutors, to a jury, she thought, It’s all a lie. She was ready to blurt it out, to tell the truth, but whenever she caught Jake’s eye she could see that he was determined, that he thought this way was best. That he loved her enough to sacrifice himself for her.

A couple of hours later, as Leigh watched the two officers put Jake in the back of the squad car, she thought, That could have been me. That should be me in there right now. And God help her, she was glad, in that moment, that it wasn’t her heading off to jail.

Some detectives came, searched the barn, Ben’s house, the vehicles. In the glove compartment of Jake’s truck they found eight vials of illegal steroids and horse-sized syringes. The detectives showed these to Gene and Leigh, to Ben. “Here’s what they were fighting over,” said the detective. “Must have been doing it for years. We’re going to have to call the feds. Transporting illegal drugs over state lines is a federal offense, you know. That boy’s going to need a good lawyer, that’s all I can say right now.”

“That’s not possible,” Leigh said, looking at the syringes like they were snakes. She wouldn’t believe it. Jake wouldn’t dope her grandfather’s horses. Jake wouldn’t be involved in anything illegal. He couldn’t be.

Could he?

Gene shook his head angrily. “I knew something was going on. I knew it.” He turned on Ben. “That colt today—you’ve been running the animals too hard and using the steroids to cover it up.”

Ben’s faced closed up. “You knew. You knew the whole time. How else could we get the best from these rotten nags of yours?”

“You’re off the farm,” Gene said, wagging his finger at Ben. “Tonight.”

“Just a second, now. My boy—”

“Your boy’s done enough damage for one lifetime. I want you gone by morning, Ben. Leave quietly or I get the sheriff involved.”

“You think this is best, Gene? You think this will be the end of it?”

“It better be.”

Ben stormed off, and the sheriff drove Jake to the station, the blue and white lights of the cruiser fading into the darkness. Her grandfather had put his arms around her, but she shrugged him off. The old man was partly to blame, too, and Leigh felt all the anger in her settle, finally, on him. If he hadn’t forbidden Leigh and Jake to see each other, none of this would have happened. She made herself stand still and not embrace him in return. Her whole body felt like it was made of glass, like it would shatter if she moved.

“I told you that boy was no good. Now you’re seeing why, Leigh.”

“Not one more word, Pop,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself, feeling like she might come completely apart if she didn’t hold herself together right then. “Now’s not the time for I-told-you-so’s.”

When they returned home she’d gone back into the house and locked herself in her room, not coming out, not speaking to anyone, even Chloe, who called and called the next day when she heard the news. She didn’t answer when her grandfather knocked to ask if she wanted breakfast, if she was feeling all right. He was trying to make it up to her, but Leigh was determined to punish him.

She spoke to no one, not until the police came to the house to take her statement. To all their questions, she gave the answer that Jake had demanded of her: They’d gone to the barn to see about the injured horse. They’d heard a noise, thought there was a horse thief in the barn. She hadn’t seen the man, hadn’t known who it was at first. They argued. Jake got her grandfather’s .357 Magnum. The man lunged, and Jake had shot once and missed. Then the man got him down on the ground, choking him. The man said he was going to kill him, kill Jake, and to stop him from choking him, Jake shot him once in the chest.

“So when did you realize that the man in the barn was Mr. Tucker?”

“When the lights went on. Until then I didn’t know.”

“Did he ever say Jake’s name? Did he ever identify himself to you?”

“I don’t think so.”

The detective wrote something in his notebook. Leigh had the feeling she’d said something wrong, somehow, that she’d messed up, but she couldn’t think how.

“Very well, Miss Merrill. We’ll be in touch.”

Afterward, standing on the front porch in her bare feet and watching the detectives pull away from the house, she thought, It will be all right. A good lawyer can get Jake off by claiming self-defense. He’ll be out soon with time served.

That was the hope she clung to—that it would blow over, it would be written off as an accident, a simple misunderstanding.

How wrong she’d been.

That last summer—when she should have been looking forward to starting college and planning her move to Boston, her life with Jake—was nothing but a blur of noise and worry. Leigh spent long hours at the sheriff’s station, the county prosecutor’s office, telling the same story over and over, and each time she got the feeling she wasn’t giving them the answer they wanted, that she was missing something. She saw them giving each other looks: they didn’t believe her. Jake was in trouble, and the more often Leigh told the story of what happened in the barn, the more certain she was that somehow she was doing him more harm than good.

Ben Rhodes left the farm, but it wasn’t an amicable parting of the ways. He came to see Gene one last time before he cleared out, asking for six months’ severance pay, which Gene refused to give him. Leigh watched the whole thing from a corner of the foyer, half hidden in the shadows.

“You think this is an early retirement?” the old man had asked when Ben laid out his demand. “You’re lucky I’m just firing you and not taking you to court. Get off my property before I have you thrown off.”

“I think you should reconsider,” said Ben. There was a threat in his voice that Leigh didn’t quite understand. “I think it would be better for both of us, and our kids, if you reconsidered. Don’t be stupid, Gene. Think of it as a donation to the future safety of your family.”

“Like hell,” said Gene. “I won’t give you another dime, Ben. You or your boy. Get your ass off my property.” Ben’s jaw clenched. “You come after my family, and you’ll have me to deal with.”

Ben stormed off, spinning the tires of his truck, but for the next few weeks, Leigh sometimes still saw him stalking around the sidewalks of Burnside—scowling over a beer at Dot’s, glaring at her when she drove her grandfather’s truck down Main Street. She kept expecting him to turn up on her grandfather’s front porch once more, but he never did, and after a while she and Gene forgot his threat. They chalked it up to the actions of a desperate man, and that was all.

Leigh was supposed to head off to Harvard in September, but she decided to defer her enrollment until after the trial. Instead she spent her eighteenth year at home, helping her grandfather, who seemed to have grown very old very quickly. Gene was having more trouble getting around the farm, and often spent whole days in the house, brooding. Maybe Leigh should have asked him what was troubling him, but she had too many of her own worries to brood on, and for that year they circled each other warily, like two shipwrecked passengers sharing the same lifeboat.

With Ben and Dale and Jake all gone, they were short-handed around the farm, so Leigh’s mother’s brother, Gene Jr.—whom everyone called Sonny—started coming down more on the weekends, bringing his wife, Becky, and their two boys to help out around the place. They were helpful and treated Leigh with the utmost kindness, but Wolf’s Head was not the same without Gene’s sturdy presence in the barns and on the tracks, and the business suffered a bit. Leigh couldn’t bring herself to go to the barn, the scene of her crime as well as an aching reminder of Jake’s absence. She huddled in the house, spending whole days in her pajamas, not speaking to anyone. Her aunt Becky’s attempts at cheering her up by taking her into town for lunch and shopping only made her wish her mother were alive so she might have someone she felt she could confide in.

Jake’s case was assigned to the public defender, a harried but determined kid of twenty-nine barely out of law school. The lawyer said there was nothing to be done about the drug charge and declared that Jake should plead guilty, take his four years, and be glad it wasn’t worse. But the lawyer seemed to think Jake had a good case on the murder charge and urged him to plead not guilty to the charge of murder by reason of self-defense. Let a jury hear the trial, he’d said, and determine Jake’s guilt or innocence.

The trial wasn’t set to begin until the following September, just after Leigh was supposed to have started her sophomore year at Harvard. They’d all had to testify at the trial—Ben, Gene, and Leigh. And Jake, of course. When he admitted the truth about the steroids. When he admitted the truth about everything except who’d been holding the gun when it went off.

He’d never written. He’d never called. He never came to the visitors’ room at the Burnside County Jail when she visited. She was starting to be afraid that he blamed her, and rightly so. She had no idea what was happening to him in there, how he was suffering. Anyone would start to doubt they were doing the right thing when they were sitting in a jail cell day after day. Anyone would start to have regrets, surely.

Leigh didn’t see Jake again until the day the trial started. Settled in the back of the courtroom, her eyes raw with lack of sleep, she had watched the bailiffs bring Jake in, looking very young and scared in his gray suit. He looked thinner and even more tired than she did, and at first she wasn’t even certain he was aware that she was in the room—he came in with his head held high on his neck, his jaw muscles clenched, eyes forward. He sat down at the defendant’s table with his hands folded in front of him. Leigh kept willing him to turn around, turn around, Jake. Look at me, Jake. Look at me.

His father, sitting just behind him, leaned forward to say something, and that was the moment Jake finally turned around and caught Leigh’s eye. She opened her mouth to say something, but he shook his head no. What did that mean? Was he angry, did he blame her? He must blame her. She watched every twitch of his shoulders and nod of his head, but she could no longer read his body language. Could a year apart have really changed him so much?

On the way out of the courtroom on the day of his testimony, he finally gave her a small smile, his eyes holding hers for just a moment longer than necessary. It gave her a momentary hope, but when she went to the jail the next day to see him, he still wouldn’t speak to her, and afterward he still wouldn’t write.

Talk to me, Jake, she wrote him. Why won’t you talk to me?

The trial dragged on for weeks. The thrust of the prosecutor’s argument seemed to be that Jake had murdered Dale Tucker over the steroids—that he was trying to keep them for himself, to sell, which was just the most ridiculous thing Leigh had ever heard. There were arguments over the timing of the two shots, over the angle at which the bullet entered Dale’s body, every bit of evidence seeming to point to the idea that Jake was lying, and at every moment Leigh wanted to stand up and scream, It was me! Jake didn’t do anything! It was all me!

Her guilt and misery were so acute that most days all she did was sit in the back of the courtroom and weep, silently, her grandfather trying to comfort her by patting her hand or her arm. She could see the eyes of the prosecutor on her from time to time, catching a glimpse of her from the front of the courtroom.

By the time it was her turn on the witness stand, she knew it was no longer in her to lie. She couldn’t even look Jake in the eye; he was nothing but a smudge of gray at the edge of her vision, looking, in his pressed suit and blue tie, like a kid playing dress-up with his dad’s wardrobe. When she passed him on her way to the witness stand, she saw him sit up a little straighter, try to catch her eye, but she walked across the courtroom with her head down and took her seat, not looking at him. Let him see how he likes it, she thought.

On the witness stand she sat with her hands in her lap, wringing the fabric of her skirt. Her testimony was mostly a blur. She remembered the prosecutor only as a flash of discolored teeth and an oily voice, her own feelings somewhere between resignation and terror. She had to get through this. For Jake. For their future together.

“Now, you originally told the police you went to the barn that night to check on a lame horse, but that isn’t really true, is it?” the prosecutor asked, staring through her. Jake had already admitted the truth about his involvement in doping the horses and been sentenced to four years on that charge. She couldn’t hide behind a fictional intruder any longer.

“That’s right. There was no lame horse.”

“So what did happen?”

“I wanted to talk to Jake. We’d had a fight before he left, and I wanted to make up with him. I was looking to apologize.” This was the first real truth that Leigh had uttered since her grandfather had arrived the night of the shooting. A rush of relief flooded her body, and she knew that soon she was going to have to tell the whole truth. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself otherwise.

“What did you fight about?”

“I didn’t like him running errands for his father and Dale. I said I didn’t like the people they sent Jake to see. I didn’t trust them.”

“What didn’t you trust about the people Dale Tucker sent Jake to see?”

“I thought they were shady. The meetings were always happening in bars or behind someone’s truck, always at night, always hours and hours away. It didn’t seem right to me.”

“Tell us about that particular night in the barn. Why didn’t you turn on the lights when you first came inside?”

“I knew my grandfather would be angry if he caught me out at such an hour, especially with Jake. I didn’t want anyone to know I was there.”

“So was this a regular occurrence, then? You and Jake sneaking around in the dark?”

Leigh blushed, heat spreading across her face as Gene looked out from the gallery.

“Yes. Jake and I often met up in the barn.”

“What did you witness inside the barn?”

“I heard Jake and Dale arguing. I couldn’t see them clearly.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“Something Dale wanted from Jake. I didn’t know what it was they were talking about, but Dale was angry. He threatened to go to my grandfather and tell him that Jake and I were still seeing each other unless he got what he wanted.”

“And did Jake give him what he wanted?”

“No. So Dale choked him. He got Jake down on the ground and was choking him with a lead line.”

“You said you couldn’t see them clearly. How did you know who was who?”

“I could hear Jake choking. Dale was still talking.”

“What did Dale say to Jake?”

“He said, ‘I will fucking kill you.’”

The prosecutor stopped a moment as the courtroom burst out in whispers. “And what happened next? When did Mr. Tucker realize you were in the barn also?”

“I spoke to him. I told him to take his hands off Jake.”

“And did he?”

“Yes. He let Jake go and started walking toward me.”

“Did Mr. Tucker say anything as he was walking toward you?”

“He tried to blackmail me. He said if I had sex with him he would keep his mouth shut about me and Jake.”

“He wasn’t threatening you?”

“I just told you he was threatening me.”

“I meant physically threatening.”

“I took it as a physical threat, yes. From Dale any threat was physical.” Leigh was angry now, remembering the feeling of Dale’s hand on her breast, the way he always pushed up so close to her. Her face went hot. The courtroom was utterly silent except for the sound of the blood rushing in Leigh’s ears.

“But he had no weapon? You saw no knife, no gun?”

She answered quietly, “No.”

“But Jake has testified that this was the moment he went to get the gun from the tack room. If Dale didn’t have a weapon, why would Jake go fetch your grandfather’s gun?”

Leigh was looking down at her hands. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up. The story Jake had already told on the stand wasn’t true; Leigh was already holding the gun when Dale started walking toward her. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? The gun had been in her hands. Her hands, and not Jake’s at all.

“Miss Merrill, if Jake was no longer in any danger—if, as you say, Mr. Tucker’s attention was on you at the moment—why would Jake need a gun? You could have walked away at that point. Why wouldn’t you simply tell Dale Tucker you weren’t going to have sex with him and let that be the end of it?”

“Dale was making terrible threats. He wouldn’t shut up.” She was coming very close to her breaking point now. They were circling the heart of the lie, and she was starting to think only the truth would get Jake, and herself, out of this mess.

“But now was the time you and Jake could have walked away safely, isn’t that true? Mr. Tucker was unarmed. Neither of you was in any imminent physical danger any longer. Isn’t that true?”

Leigh remembered the sound of the gun going off. The flash. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Instead Jake executed an unarmed man. He went and got your grandfather’s .357 Magnum from the tack room, and he shot Dale Tucker once in the chest. He shot him over five thousand dollars’ worth of steroids.”

So this was the gist of the prosecutor’s argument: that Jake had lied when he said Dale’s murder was self-defense. That he was covering something up. And the prosecutor was right about that much: Jake was covering something up. But the prosecutor was wrong about what it was.

Leigh hadn’t been able to look at Jake, hadn’t been able to make herself keep up the lie any longer. The real truth was like an explosion in her chest, and when it would come out, finally, it would blow her to bits.

“Isn’t that what happened, Miss Merrill?”

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”

“What was that?”

“Jake didn’t kill Dale over the steroids.”

“How can you say so? You know he’s already pleaded guilty to the drugs charge, Miss Merrill.”

“Jake didn’t kill Dale over the steroids. Jake didn’t kill anyone at all. He didn’t go get the gun.” She rushed forward, her mouth dry as dust. “It was me. I got the gun. I’m the one who shot Dale Tucker.”

A murmur of surprise went up across the courtroom. She didn’t look at her grandfather or Ben Rhodes or the prosecutor, the judge or jury. She didn’t look at anyone but Jake, whose face across from her was a mask of horror, his blue eyes shocked. No, he mouthed at her. Leigh, don’t.

After the murmur died down, the prosecutor recovered himself and said, “You don’t really expect the court to believe that, do you?”

“Yes,” she said. “You wanted the truth. It’s the truth.”

“Miss Merrill, may I remind you you’re under oath? That perjury is a serious offense? You’ve already admitted to one lie today. Are you sure you want to add another?” His voice fairly dripped with condescension. “It’s admirable that you’d like to protect your ex-boyfriend, but perjuring yourself is not the way to do it. You’d both go to jail, you realize, for lying under oath.”

Leigh hesitated. She hadn’t thought about perjury. She hadn’t expected that they would not believe her. She’d only thought that the truth was something she owed Jake, that she would prove to him she was still worthy of his love and he’d forgive her. She’d thought the truth would make everything simple.

What do you do when you finally tell the truth, but people have already decided to believe the lie?

She was making another horrible mistake. She was too late. It was all useless—the truth, the lie. All of it.

Across the courtroom, Jake widened his eyes at her. No, he mouthed again. Don’t do this.

She looked back down at her lap. Her fingers looked like they belonged to someone else. Her clothes felt like lead weights, pulling her down. She wanted to run, far from Texas, far from the courtroom. She closed her eyes and imagined herself standing up, walking out the door of the courtroom, and running away, running free. Running until her heart burst and her legs collapsed. Running until she found a place where no one knew her, where she could start over.

“Now, let’s get back to the real story of what happened, Miss Merrill. No more fairy tales, please. Can you do that?”

It took a minute for Leigh to come back to herself, a long minute in which she could feel the impatience of the people in the courtroom, the prosecutor, even the judge. “All right,” she said finally, and looked back down at her hands. “I’m sorry. I promise to tell the truth from now on.” A lie. Another lie.

The prosecutor smiled. He was back in familiar territory now, thought he knew exactly where he was going, but he didn’t know anything. No one did.

“Okay, then. Where were we? Yes—how Jake killed Dale over five thousand dollars’ worth of illegal steroids.”

He kept talking, asking Leigh questions, and she answered them, her voice robotic. She had tried to stop the machinery of justice, but it hadn’t worked. That machinery was moving inexorably to convict the man she loved, and she was too weak to stop it. She was too weak, because everyone thought that she, Leigh Merrill, was incapable of cold-blooded murder. They thought it was a joke, a last-ditch Hail Mary pass meant to spare Jake from going to prison.

Everyone was wrong.

For months Leigh’s own conscience had been a millstone around her neck, threatening to pull her to the bottom of the river, and as she sat on the witness stand, she knew if she didn’t remove the weight, she’d never be able to breathe freely again. The person Leigh had been trying most to save that day in the courtroom had been herself.

“Thank you, Miss Merrill. No more questions, Your Honor.”

 

OCTOBER 4, 2005

Burnside, TX

Jake,

I came to see you yesterday after I left court, but again they said you wouldn’t come out of your cell. The guard, the surly woman who registers the names of visitors to the jail, didn’t even look up at me when I said who I’d come to see. “He still doesn’t want any visitors,” she said, “but keep trying if it makes you feel better.” Then she laughed, a mean little laugh with no humor in it. At least I made it outside before anyone could see I was crying.

I keep thinking it has to be some mistake, that you wouldn’t really turn me away if you knew I was here. Maybe no one’s told you I’ve come, even though they’re supposed to. Maybe someone’s messing with us. Maybe you’ve sent me letters, too, lots of letters, but the guards are taking them away after you put them in the mail. Maybe my grandfather is hiding them from me. I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s done plenty to keep us apart all this time.

I picture you writing me letter after letter, addressing them to me, dropping them in the prison mail, then the guards or my grandfather snatching your letters away and ripping them up, tearing them into tiny little pieces and laughing at you, and at me.

But I know that can’t be right. If you wanted to see me, you would come to the visitors’ room and talk to me, wouldn’t you? It must be true that you don’t want to see me.

Maybe there are things about you I didn’t know, but I didn’t think there was anything so earth-shattering that it could change everything between us. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my grandfather was right, and you don’t love me after all, not like I thought. Am I a stupid little girl for still wanting you to come back to me? For loving you, in spite of everything?

I want to give you a chance to explain. I want to understand why the drugs were in your car that night. You knew it was wrong to dope the horses. You knew it, but you helped your father and Dale, knowing it could be the end of my grandfather’s business and Wolf’s Head.

We could have lost everything. We still could. Several more of the horses have come up lame, and three have had to be put down. My grandfather’s health has been bad since you were arrested. It’s like he’s lost heart. Uncle Sonny and Aunt Becky try to help, but I don’t know if I can leave him like this. I don’t even know if I want to go. It’s all spoiled for me, Jake. I don’t know how to picture the future anymore without you in it.

I hope you know I tried to do the right thing yesterday. I thought it would help, but as usual I was wrong. I’ve been wrong about so many things lately. I don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, but I want you to know I tried to tell the truth. I tried, but they didn’t believe me.

Please write to me. Please forgive me. I don’t know how to go on without you.

 

Love,

Leigh

 

OCTOBER 7, 2005

Burnside County Jail

Dear Leigh,

They told me you came by again yesterday. I was in my cell when I heard, reading. Anna Karenina. For weeks now I’ve been reading. In prison you read, or work out, or fight. Sleep won’t come easily, and when it does it’s accompanied by vicious dreams. I’m back in the barn and Dale is coming at me. Sometimes you point the gun at me. Sometimes you pull the trigger. I wake up thinking I’m dead.

Sometimes I wish I were.

I was on the part where Anna leaves her husband for Vronsky. Funny that Anna’s brother can have as many affairs as he likes without consequences while Anna loses everything. Maybe Tolstoy doesn’t like Anna much. Maybe he’s wishing bad things on her, trying to make her suffer. Maybe some woman somewhere hurt him once, and this is his revenge.

I should have told you the truth a long time ago. I could see it in your face in that courtroom, how much I hurt you. I hope you understand. Dale threatened over and over to go to your grandfather if I didn’t go along with them. I knew if my dad lost his job, we’d have to leave, and I might never see you again. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you. Now I wish I’d told, no matter what might have happened. I’m in here, and you’re on the other side of the wall, and there’s no way in heaven or on earth for us to be together. I’m starting to think it might be a very long time before I get out of here.

It was my fault. The gun. Everything. If I’d only been able to stand up to my old man.

I want to say all this to you in person. I don’t want to write it in a letter. I want to see your face when I tell you I’m sorry and ask your forgiveness. I’m so ashamed of myself. If I’d been braver, or smarter, you wouldn’t have been in the barn that night. We’d be together in Boston right now.

You wouldn’t have looked at me today with stones in your eyes.

I will hold those stones in my heart. I will hold them until they sink me down. When I come up for air again—if I ever come up for air again—I hope you will have let them go.

 

Love,

—J.