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“Bishop?”
“Yeah?”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Oh my God!” Her eyes go wide again. “You were just a child. You spent your whole adolescence in prison.”
“Pretty much. According to the prosecutor, I should have gotten life. Maybe that would have been for the best. It’s not like I belong among the common folk.”
“That’s why you keep yourself isolated.”
“Yeah, so much for being your knight in shining armor.” I let out a short, sharp laugh.
“He didn’t leave you a choice,” Seri says. “By all rational thinking, what you did was self-defense.”
I stare at her in disbelief for a moment. Obviously, she didn’t pay attention to everything I said.
“I ambushed him, Seri. I waited for him with an axe in my hands, and I hit him seventy-four times, or so said the medical examiner. I really don’t know. He had to be identified through dental work. It wasn’t self-defense. I murdered him in cold blood. Just ask my mother.”
“Was she angry?”
I laugh again.
“Angry? She testified against me at my sentencing. She asked for the death penalty and yelled at the judge when he told her that wasn’t applicable in a juvenile case. She said I ruined her life and wished I had never been born. I can’t say that I blame her though, not now.”
“Why do you say that?”
In a flash, the whole night repeats itself in my head. My stomach churns, and pressure builds behind my eyes. The whiskey hits me full force, and I can’t stop tears from spilling onto my face.
“Because she’s right! I never should have been born! She said everything was fine with him until I came along and ruined it! I was fucked up from the beginning, and he must have known that too!”
I’m crying and I can’t stop. I shove myself out of the bed, get my feet tangled in the blanket, and fall to the floor in a heap. Seri is beside me half a second later, wrapping her arms around me and pulling me against her chest while I sob.
I have no idea how long I stayed there on the floor, wrapped in Seri’s arms and bawling like a baby. I do know I’ve never cried like this before, not even the one time I was sent to solitary for a week, though it had been tempting. I never let myself go like this. Never.
What is this woman doing to me?
I pull away from her slowly.
“Bishop…” She reaches out for me, and I shake my head.
“I’m all right.”
“You’re not.”
“I just need to…to step outside for a minute.” I feel like I could puke at any moment, and I don’t want to do that in front of her.
“It’s freezing out there,” she says. As if I need a reminder.
“I’ll be fine. Really—I just need to be outside. I’ll be right back.”
“Be careful.”
I nod and pull on my coat, boots, and gloves. I grab the snowshoes from the wall by the door, climb out the hole in the snowbank, and head out into the dark landscape.
It’s nearly pitch black outside, and the cold wind burns my cheeks and my lungs. I pull my facemask up over my mouth and nose and give myself a moment to get used to the change in temperature. I strap on the snowshoes and make my way across the crisp, icy top of the snowbank and head toward the shadowy image of the barn in the distance.
