Sidetracked-Kobo (18 page)

I closed my eyes. The day had been bad enough. Did I need to make it worse by picking a fight with my boyfriend—something I’d never done?

“I’m talking about you and your reputation in Redbud. I’m just suggesting that as much as you like Billy, you might pull back now from saying anything more. Because if you’re proven wrong, I think you’ll live to regret it.”

Tears of frustration bit my eyes. I tried to blink them back and failed.

“Hey.” Andy reached over to squeeze my arm. “I don’t want to make you cry. I just … want to protect you, that’s all.”

Since the beginning of our relationship, Andy had viewed himself as my protector. As if I was somehow lost and needing direction. He was three years older and supposedly therefore wiser. Little did he realize I’d lived through twice what he had in my lifetime.

“I know.” I dug a tissue out of my purse.

“Look. Just let me say one thing, all right? Then we’ll change the subject.”

Like there
was
any another subject right now. “Okay.”

He tapped a finger against the steering wheel, as if considering how to begin. “Sometimes people surprise us. Sometimes they’re not at all what they pretend to be.”

My gaze darted to his face and hung there.

“I know you’ve seen it on the news or heard stories. Everyone swears they know a certain person, and that person would never do x, y, z, but then it turns out they did. And the friends and family members say ‘how can this be? It just doesn’t fit with what I know.’ Or sometimes people who may be disturbed don’t show it outwardly. They’re quiet and easy to overlook. Until
bam
, they blow up.”

Shades of the town’s gossip Colleen had heard. I turned my head away. My heartbeat felt like a hard grind.

“Do you hear what I’m trying to say, Delanie? I just don’t want you hurt more than you already are in case something like that happens.”

I rubbed my hands together, focusing on my fingernails. Why didn’t I paint my nails? It would be so much more refined and fashionable. So would living in my house by myself, instead of gathering a faux family. And I should have a job. Be like a normal person. I’d bucked all those things to be
me
in this new life I’d created.

Except I wasn’t being the real me
at all. Never could be.

“Delanie?”

Words stuck in my throat. “I hear you. Thanks.”

Andy sighed. “Okay then.” He slid his arm across my shoulder and massaged my neck. “I’m done. And now—this evening is about us. No one else.”

My chest felt tight.

I could think of little to say the rest of the drive, or as we sat down to dinner at a secluded corner table in the best restaurant in Lexington. Andy told me about his real estate deals—which had worked, which were giving him trouble. I responded at all the right times, but it was obvious I was still upset. Andy kept up the conversation, pouring out energy for both of us. I loved him for that.

After our meal was finished, he pushed aside his coffee and reached across the table for my hand. “Delanie.” His eyes were so warm. “I love you.”

My throat constricted. How had I ever found this man? “I love you too.”

He took his hand away to reach into the pocket of his coat. Brought out a blue velvet box and pulled back its top. A large stunning diamond in platinum gold sparkled in the lamplight.

All air left my lungs.

Andy watched my face, nervousness pulling at his mouth. Never before had I seen him show such an expression. “I want to be with you forever, Delanie Miller. You’re everything I need. Will you marry me?”

I couldn’t speak. A montage of memories flooded me. My father and mother kissing in front of a Christmas tree. My father’s grief at her death. The long days in juvey, when all I wanted was the family I’d lost. The horrible years and further shocks following my guilty verdict. The day I bought my house in Redbud. The day Pete moved in. My first date with Andy. The nights I’d fallen asleep dreaming of this moment. Clara’s smile after her wedding shower—“You’re next, Delanie!”

Andy still held out the ring. “I—I know it’s a bad time. Sorry for that. I just … after what happened to Clara, I want you near me always. Starting now.”

I looked at him, fresh tears in my eyes. His mother would hate this.

“Sometimes people aren’t what they pretend to be.”

Love for Andy flushed through me. The last thing I would ever do was hurt this man. And if he found out how I’d lied to him about who I was, my childhood, my parents—
everything
—he
would
be hurt. I could never, ever let that happen. Ironic, how he thought he would be protecting me from now on. Just the opposite. Whatever it took, however hard it was, I would protect
him
from discovering my deceit. For Andy. For me. For our life together.

I gave him a shaky smile. Took the box from his hand and slipped the gorgeous ring onto my left fourth finger. “Yes. You know the answer is yes!”

October 1995 –

January 2004

Two weeks after her guilty verdict, Laura Denton was sentenced to serve time in the California Youth Authority until she turned twenty-five. She would be moved by the end of the year.

Eight and a half years in CYA.

By the time the judge handed down her sentence, Laura already knew what was coming. Devlon had warned her. No crying out, no fainting like she’d done at the verdict. Laura heard the words fall like stones from the judge’s mouth but barely felt a thing. In the last two weeks she’d gone numb. The days blurred by, nothing mattering, nothing to fight for. Letters had stopped coming from her friends. Did they believe everything they read in the papers? Had their parents made them quit writing? No matter, either way. Laura was alone.

Her mother’s real killer would never be brought to justice.

A week after the sentencing, Laura’s father showed up in a surprise visit. When they told her he was there, the anger in her wanted to declare she wouldn’t see him. The love in her, however beaten and bruised, moved her feet out of her room and down the hall.

They faced each other in the glassed enclosure, both standing. Her dad looked like he’d aged ten years.

“Hi.” His hands hung awkwardly at his sides, as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

“Hi.”

“I came to see you before …”

“Before they ship me off to CYA? Somebody in there’ll kill me, you know. That’s what happens in that place.”

Her father’s face turned grayer.

Laura’s nerves sizzled. She wanted to punch him. She wanted to throw her arms around him and never let go. “You still think I did this? You really believe that?”

He shook his head. “I … don’t know.”

“Which means you do.” Her voice was razor sharp.

He gazed at her, pain zigzagging his face. “Did you?”

She closed her eyes, so weary. “Like you didn’t hear my answer enough in court?”

Her father gave a slow nod. Looked away.

Weakness rushed Laura’s legs. She sat down in one of the plastic chairs. Minutes ticked by, both of them staring at nothing.

Laura took a breath. “You gonna come visit me in CYA?”

He flinched. “You want me to?”

Yes. No. Who knew? What she wanted was her
life back
. Her mom alive. And her dad. School. Friends.

“You still have that same cop girlfriend?”

Her father lowered himself into a chair. Focused on his hands. “Yeah.”

“You gonna marry her?”

He shrugged.

“I’ll bet she tells you how guilty I am, huh. Fills your ears full with it.”

“We … don’t talk about it.”

“Oh. Your daughter and your
dead wife
aren’t worth talking about?”

He looked up at her, eyes glazed. “Laura.
Don’t.
”

Her heart turned over. If only she could hug him. Cry into his chest. But he sat across from her, a world away.

Laura closed her eyes. How hard she was becoming. How cynical. And she wasn’t even in CYA yet. She heard how that place changed people. She couldn’t let herself get worse. Age twenty-five was a lifetime away, but it would come. And she’d have the rest of her life. Somehow … some way she had to keep some part of who she was. Who she’d been.

She picked at a pulled thread on her ugly cotton pants. “So you gonna marry her or not?”

Her dad sighed. “I don’t want to talk about Tina. I want to talk about you.”

Tina.
Laura hated that name. “What’s there to talk about? You think I’m guilty. That I’m going where I deserve. And no matter what you say, I know your girlfriend convinced you of that. After all she is a
cop.”

“You’re still my daughter.”

“What good does that do?”

His jaw flexed. “I’ll always love you.”

She looked down and shook her head.

More silence.

“Are you happy with her?
Tina?”

“Why do you keep asking about her?”

Laura bristled. “Maybe because she’s your life now. Mom’s gone, I’m in here rotting away. And you just go on with your new, happy existence.”

He swallowed. “It’s not all happy, Laura.”

Well, cry me a river. “It should be miserable! You shouldn’t be sleeping at all, thinking about me in here for some horrible thing I didn’t do. You should be working day and night to get me out of here! Instead it’s like you’re … somebody else. You don’t even know me anymore.” The
injustice
built in Laura, higher and higher until she could stand it no more. She pushed to her feet. “You know what—I don’t want to see you in here again. I
can’t
. It hurts too much, and there’s nothing left to say.”

Laura turned away and headed for the door. Sobs clogged her throat.

She whirled back. Tears prismed her vision. “Tell you what.” She jabbed a finger toward her father. “Come see me in CYA—when you
know
I’m innocent.”

She flung open the door and stumbled to the desk where Tats waited.

As she was escorted down the long hall to her room, Laura sobbed aloud. She wanted to scream. Wanted to run back and tell her father she hadn’t meant it. Instead she hung her head, watching the scuffed floor slide beneath her plodding feet. In her room she flopped down on her cot, her back to her roommate, and stared at the wall. Her heart tremored, ready to burst from her chest.

Laura knew her father would never come see her in CYA.

On November fifteenth Laura was transported to Ventura County in Southern California, the only CYA that accepted girls. As Laura began the intake process at the facility part of her was still scared past comprehension. Another part didn’t care. If somebody here—a
real
killer—wanted to knife her, so what? Death didn’t matter much when you had nothing to live for.

She was put in a tiny room with brick walls. A small, hard cot—like she’d had in juvey. A little desk. A white toilet and sink. At least she was by herself, no roommate. The day room was a large area where she and other inmates could go when let out of their cells. There was a family visiting room—not that she’d have any visitors. And a pay phone in the day room to call family. Not that she’d be using it.

“Don’t look like a victim,” inmates at juvey had warned her. They were the ones with brothers and sisters and cousins in CYA, who filled her ears with tales of the horrible place. But how to not “look like a victim” when you’re not tough and had never been in trouble with the police in your entire life—until they decided you’d killed your mother?

Laura tried to keep to herself, which lasted about an hour the first time she was let out of her cell into the day room. A huge girl with frizzy blonde hair sidled up to Laura, her eyes slitted. “I heard you killed your mama.” She spoke with a Southern accent. How she’d ended up in California, Laura had no clue and didn’t want to ask.

“They said I did. But I didn’t.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Nobody in here’s guilty.”

Laura protested. Made no difference. The girl looked at her like she was scum. “I can understand killin’ somebody else, but your own
mama
?”

Word soon spread. No one liked Laura. After a month it started to get to her. Stuck in here was bad enough. Couldn’t she have one friend? After the second month she quit telling people she was innocent. No one listened. And she may not have had friends, but no one bothered her either. Apparently she was considered quiet but dangerous. If she’d killed her own mother, who knew what she was capable of?

They went to school in the days, for what it was worth. If anybody got out of control, if a fight erupted, they were all sent back to their rooms. On non-school days she was in that tiny cell by herself for twenty-three hours a day. Laura thought she would climb the walls.

How could she do this for
eight and a half years?

Laura missed her mom more than ever. And her dad. Was he married by now? Did he ever think about her?

She felt herself slipping away to some remote, alien place. Sometimes she couldn’t feel anything. In group counseling sessions she never said a word, no matter how hard the counselor tried to draw her out. They all saw her as a murderer. What was there for her to say?

“Hold on to you—the real you,”
she told herself over and over. Some day eons from now she’d be out. She’d be twenty-five with no family (that cared anyway), no job, and no money. She’d have to make it on her own, build her own family. She’d find a man who loved her. She would be a mother some day. But she couldn’t do that if she was all hardness and cold. She needed to keep the ability to love in her heart. Somehow.

God was no help. He didn’t do prison.

The first year dragged by …

…

…

…

And the second …

…

…

Laura earned her high school degree.

Now what to do with herself within those four walls? There were some vocational classes, but she wasn’t interested in any of them.