That Night (7 page)

“I will.” I glanced at Mom and she gave me a little smile, so forced it looked painful.

As they walked toward the exit Dad reached for Mom’s hand, but she didn’t hold it back, her hand limp in his. I remembered their raised voices behind closed doors after Nicole was murdered, how they’d retreat into silence whenever I entered the room. I’d thought my going away might help their marriage, but it seemed I was still the wedge driving them apart. I couldn’t stand thinking I’d taken something else from them that night.

*   *   *

After I’d been at Rockland for almost two months, Janet sat down beside me outside. I’d gotten another letter from Ryan that day and hadn’t felt like going for my run. I was just drawing circles in the dirt with my finger over and over.

“Pinky tells me you’ve got a boyfriend on the men’s side,” Janet said. “He was your codefendant?”

“Yeah.” I kept drawing circles.

“Girl, you can do easy time, or you can do hard time. Those letters you’re always writing, they just screw with your head.”

“I need him.”

“Things go a lot better in here if you don’t have anything left to miss on the outside. This is your world now, your home.”

My finger paused. “This isn’t my home.”

“Yeah, it is, kid. And you thinking you ain’t one of us, pretending and hoping like the guards are going to open up your cell one day so you can bounce out of here, is just making shit harder for yourself. You’re not going anywhere for a long time. And you’re not doing him any favors either. Men, they like to fix shit. If you’re sobbing to him, that’s going to make him go insane.”

“It’s not like that with us.”

“Just ask yourself if you feel better or worse after you get a letter from him.” She stood up. “It’s probably the same for him.”

After she left, I thought about what she’d said, still tracing circles in the dirt. Was she right? Was I making things harder on Ryan? I thought of how tough the last year and a half had been, not seeing him, how much harder it got when I’d finally been able to see him in court, where we still couldn’t be natural. Now we could only write. It was painful, being reminded of how much I loved and missed him, but I wasn’t going to stop. I needed him to talk about our future, how things would be when we were found innocent, when Nicole’s real killer was finally punished and she got some justice. I needed him to fill me with enough hope to carry me through the endless days. It was the only thing that kept me going. Our appeal date was only a month away. Thirty days. I could make it through another thirty days. I’d already made it through sixty.

I stared down at the unbroken circles in the dirt.
That’s me and Ryan, unbroken.

*   *   *

A few days later, my parents made it over again. I hadn’t seen them in a month. I knew they’d already used up a lot of their savings on legal fees and couldn’t afford to come every weekend—the ferry was expensive and it was an all-day trip, an hour-and-a-half drive from Campbell River to the ferry in Nanaimo, the hour-and-a-half crossing time, then Vancouver traffic all the way out to the prison. My mom seemed even tenser this visit, her hands tearing at her fingernails every time I mentioned the appeal or lawyer.

Finally she said, “If it doesn’t go through, we can’t take it to the Supreme Court. We can’t keep paying for the lawyer.”

My dad grabbed her hand, pulled it away and held it tight, so she couldn’t pick at her nails. “Toni doesn’t need to hear that right now.”

“I think Toni does need to hear this.” Mom’s tone was bitter. “We’re nearly broke. We’ve lost just about everything.” The words hung in the air, tears forming in her eyes. She wasn’t talking about money anymore.

I felt tears building behind my own eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

She stared down at my dad’s hand holding hers and slumped back in her chair like all the energy had left her body. Dad stroked her hand with one thumb. I thought about how long it had been since I’d felt a soothing touch and shook off a stab of jealousy, ashamed.

“Don’t worry, Toni,” Dad said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Mom’s head snapped in his direction so fast her ponytail swung. I remembered when we were growing up how much she hated it when he’d say, “It’s fine, don’t worry,” or “Everything’s going to be fine.” She’d say, “You can’t know that, Chris.” And now I knew exactly what she was thinking.

Nothing will ever be fine again
.

She stood up, her voice breaking as she said, “I can’t do this.” She hesitated, looking down at me like she wanted to say something else, but then she turned and rushed toward the exit, her hand over her mouth like she was holding back the words. Dad’s face was red as he watched her leave, and he was breathing fast, his forehead shiny with sweat. I worried about his health. Mom wore her stress on the outside, but what had all of this been doing to my father?

He met my eyes. “Your mother … I should make sure she’s okay. I’m sorry, honey. She’s still struggling.”

But she wasn’t. She was done, and we both knew it.

As he got up and walked away, I heard a noise to my left and glanced at the other table. Mouse was sitting with her family, her mother beside her. They were talking and laughing. She looked at the exit, where you could still see my father leaving, my mother long gone, and Mouse gave me a slow, mean smile.

*   *   *

After that terrible visit, my father still sent letters each week but with no mention of a visit—just news about work, the house, friends, and only brief mentions of my mother, what she’d planted in the yard, how she was repainting the fence and had bought a new patio set. I tried to read between the lines, tried to tell myself she might still come around one day. I wondered sometimes now if my father also believed I was guilty but loved me all the same. I don’t know which thought was more painful, and I knew I’d never be able to ask him.

I finally got the package from my dad with the photos I requested and Pinky grudgingly made room on the wall. Her side was mostly covered with photos of her kids—she had four, all in foster care. She cried sometimes because one of the foster parents wasn’t sending letters or bringing the kid for visits. Every week she’d get letters from the other ones, or little handmade cards. I taped up all the photos of Nicole and Ryan, then lay on my bed and stared at them until I finally fell asleep, Nicole’s sweet smile chasing me into my dreams.

*   *   *

A month later, I called my lawyer for news about my appeal, my hands shaking on the phone. His voice grim, he said, “I don’t have good news.”

I listened, my heart thudding loud in my head. The judges at the appeals court had decided that the original judge had made the right decision. The next step would be to take it to the Supreme Court, but it would be costly, and I could sense that he thought it would be futile. I also thought of what my mom had said and knew there was no way I could ask them to take this any further.

“What about legal aid?” I said.

“Without any new evidence or witnesses, you’d have a tough time finding anyone who’s going to take this on.”

“There has to be someone who can help.” I felt panicky, my last chance slipping through my fingers.

“I’ve asked around, but no one was interested.”

I sat silent, his words crashing down around me.
No one was interested.

“I’m really sorry, Toni.”

“There’s
nothing
we can do?”

“Something may come to light in a few years.” He was quiet for a beat. “But some people, they find it’s easier to just do their time and learn to have some kind of life inside. You’ll still be a young woman when you get out.”

“But I didn’t do it!” Anger was starting to choke my throat, making it hard to think, to speak. I looked around, took in my surroundings. This was all I was going to see for years, cement and metal. He was telling me to let go of hope. To give up. And he was right. There was nothing left.

“Try to focus on the future, take some courses,” he said.

“My life is over.” I hung up the phone.

*   *   *

My dad came for a visit a couple of days later, and he was alone. I noticed how gray his hair was getting, seemingly overnight. He had pouches under his eyes and he looked like he’d lost weight. I was just about to ask about Mom when he quickly said, “Your mom has a bad cold and couldn’t make the trip, but she was sorry to hear about the verdict.”

I nodded and forced a smile so he wouldn’t think I was too upset. I knew I shouldn’t be surprised that she hadn’t come, but it still stung. She’d probably taken the court’s decisions as another sign of my guilt—she’d been right about me all along. I had a feeling she’d have been more upset if I’d been freed and gone unpunished for Nicole’s death. I wondered if they’d been fighting about me.

“Are you guys okay?” I said.

“We’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

I wished he would just be real and tell me what was actually happening for them, but I knew he wouldn’t. Just like I wasn’t going to tell him what was really happening for me on the inside. It had been like that for years with us, ever since my life started imploding in high school. Why would anything change now?

We talked for a while, but I couldn’t get lost in the chatter. The stuff he was telling me about the outside, a new house they were building, things that were happening in town, either frustrated me or made me sad that I wasn’t a part of them. I tried to disconnect from the pain he was stirring up, the noise in my head, but then I went to a hard place, an angry place where I wondered how he could talk about such trivial things when I’d lost what was probably my last chance at freedom, when Nicole’s murderer was still out there. How could he move on like this? When I was in high school it felt like we weren’t in the same world—now it felt like we weren’t even in the same universe.

“I’ll try to come back next month, okay, honey?” he said at the end of the visit. “Your grandma wants to come next time.”

I thought of my grandma with her aching legs and varicose veins, traveling hours to see her granddaughter in jail. She was the only grandparent I had left—my dad’s mother—and we’d been close when I was growing up. I’d spend weekends at her house, and she taught me how to make pierogies. She’d come to the trial, her head shaking at any negative testimony, her face determined and angry. She told me she knew I couldn’t have done it and had written me a few times in prison. But I was scared to think that might have changed for her.

“You don’t have to do that, Dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s expensive and it’s a long trip. You work hard all week—and Grandma, she’d be sore, sitting all day in a truck. I don’t want to do that to her.”

“Hey, don’t worry about us, okay? We want to support you any way we can, and we miss you.” I imagined him going home alone, Mom and him having dinner. Did they talk? Or did she give him the silent treatment for visiting me, for betraying Nicole?

“Dad, it means a lot that you’ve been coming, but it’s really hard on me too—reminds me of everything, you know? And I get homesick. I can’t do any visits for a while. We can write and stuff, but right now I need to get used to life in here, okay?”

“Okay.” He nodded but he was blinking back tears. I was crying too.

“Don’t cry, Dad. It will be better for us, I think—and for Mom.”

He met my eyes and gave a sad smile. This time I didn’t wait to watch him walk away. I got up first and went back to the guards, back to my cell, back to hell. I had done it. I’d pushed away the last family member who cared about me.

CHAPTER SIX

W
OODBRIDGE
H
IGH
, C
AMPBELL
R
IVER

J
ANUARY
1996

Monday after the party, I headed out to the parking lot at lunch to wait for Ryan. A car drove past me with some kids I knew from school. I was about to wave hello but only got my hand up partway when I noticed that they were all looking at me and laughing about something. What was their problem? I dropped my hand and kept walking to Ryan’s truck, trying to convince myself that I was imagining things—they were probably laughing about something else. Then I noticed what someone had written in the mud on Ryan’s tailgate:

My girlfriend is a dirty slut. She gave Jason Leroy a blow job in ninth grade.

I was frantically trying to wipe it off when Ryan came out.

“Shit,” he said when he saw it.

“It had to be Shauna.” I studied his face, worried. It was bad enough I’d fooled around with Jason, but he’d gotten into drugs the last two years and been suspended a couple of times, plus he hung out with the skankiest girls.

Ryan did look furious, but his anger wasn’t aimed at me.

“If I catch her doing that again, she’s going to have to deal with me.”

“What are you going to do?” I felt relieved but was still shaken up by Shauna’s crude message.

“I’ll figure out some way to embarrass her. I know a few guys who’ve messed around with her.” He looked at my face, saw how upset I was, and said, “Don’t worry about it, babe. No one probably saw it.”

He pulled me in for a hug. But I knew they
had
seen it. Over his shoulder I noticed some kids by their car looking at us and laughing. Ryan heard them and turned around, his shoulders squared.

“You got a problem, assholes?”

They shut up, one of the guys holding his hands out in a hey-we’re-cool gesture. But it didn’t matter what Ryan said or who he threatened, it was already all over school—kids whispered and giggled when I walked down the hallway to my afternoon class. I tried to look like I didn’t care, but my cheeks were hot and I felt close to tears.

After school, Ryan and I got coffee at Tim Hortons and drove around on some back roads. We’d been silent for a while, just listening to the music, smoking cigarettes, both of us thinking, when he finally said, “Was it true?”

“Is what true?”

“About Jason. Did you, you know…”

My face burned. I’d hoped he wasn’t going to ask. “He was different back then. And Shauna…” I told him the whole story, how she’d set me up, how Jason had pressured me. At the end, I said, “Are you pissed?”