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Jeb was an unwelcome visitor, though, on an almost daily basis. He appeared in dreams, in memories, and in my confounding desire to know how he could have changed so much over the years from the young man I thought I’d known.
II
We faced one another across a table in a room as gray as the wintry sky outside the prison. Jeb was in an orange jumpsuit, dark hair shorn down to his scalp, with multiple crude tattoos peeking out from just about anywhere the orange didn’t cover. His wrists were cuffed and, beneath our scarred table, his ankles were bound by a heavy chain.
His green eyes were the only thing I was at ease focusing on. It was because they were about the only aspect of him I could recall from those glorious days when I was thirteen years old and madly in love with this boy.
I had to wonder—had he already been evil when we knew each other back then? Was he only hiding it? Or, more likely, had the trauma of what had been done to him transformed him into a monster?
I supposed I could ask him, but who knows what kind of answer he’d have for me? Who knows if even he was aware of the why of his own broken psyche?
He regarded me with a blank expression, staring across the table and the low divider separating us. His expression lacked guile, expectation, recognition, or really much emotion at all. He didn’t say a word, not even hello, so I guessed he was waiting for my cue.
“Thanks for seeing me. You certainly didn’t have to put me on your visitor list.”
He nodded, expression remaining neutral. I began to wonder if coming here had been a mistake. What good would it do me?
“I was curious.” His voice was deep, a rich baritone, and nothing like the breaking adolescent voice I remembered even now. It was the voice of a man I didn’t know.
I fell silent. Have you ever been in a situation where stringing together a few words became an almost Herculean task? Overwhelmed with pain, regret, and a kind of morbid curiosity, I struggled with how to conduct this conversation.
What do you really want to know? Ask that.
So, I did.
“Why? I came to court every day to try and figure it out, but your lawyer never allowed you to take the stand. And frankly, no one cared much about the why. But I care and maybe it’ll help me with closure if I know.”
“You want me to help you?” His face went from neutral to a sneer. I felt his view of me was akin to someone looking at a cockroach, and I shrank back in my seat a little. This was a moment I recognized for what it was—if I had any doubt that the Jeb I knew all those years ago in St. Clair was gone for good, then that doubt was now erased.
“It’s up to you, Jeb.” I felt odd even using his first name, since he was essentially now a stranger to me, although life would forever bind us up in ways that were equal parts horror and joy. “You don’t have to say a word. In fact, I think you can just call a guard over here and go back to your cell. I won’t bother you again.” I looked around me, at the crowded visiting room—families reuniting, lovers longing to touch, people coming to assuage a prisoner’s loneliness out of the kindness of their hearts. No one like us… “Yeah, after murdering my Marc, maybe it’s not too much to ask for a little help in understanding why.”
He leaned a bit closer. His breath was rancid and his teeth were yellow, one of the front ones chipped. The beautiful promise of his youth had vanished, its only remaining signpost his piercing eyes, the color of sea glass.
“It was all your fault, you and that cunt mother of yours.”
I’m nearly fifty years old, yet I can say with certainty this is the first time I’d ever heard anyone call my mother a cunt. If these words were spoken under different circumstances, I might have been shocked, appalled, might have stormed off.
But now I was simply disappointed that I didn’t see it coming. “How so?” I wondered.
“Oh, don’t play innocent with me. I know you two were always thick as thieves. You knew and she knew.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When the pair of you sent me into the woods that night, on the Fourth.”
I shrugged. “Best I can remember, I told you to go back there to take a piss.”
“Yeah, yeah, it was all so innocent. Your mama really never told you? How she sold me up the river? Into bondage?” He shook his head, looked around the room. “Walker told me how she took money from him, a thousand bucks I think it was, if she’d lead him to me. And she did! How the hell else would he know exactly where to go? And which boy was prettier?” His smile was nightmarish and would haunt me, I knew, for a long time, probably the rest of my life.
I wouldn’t need to ask Trudy to deny these accusations. I knew—in my bones, my heart, my gut, my head—that my mother would have never done such a thing. She’d told me herself how Walker had “found” Jeb—she’d invited the man to come with us and filled him in on all the details he’d need. It was all unwitting, in the hopes she could forge a relationship with a new man. But even without that information she naively gave, she wasn’t the kind of soul who’d hand over an innocent boy to a predator to essentially be an abused and brainwashed slave to a very sick and dangerous man.
Trudy didn’t have it in her. Not back then, not now, not ever. I knew this deep in my bones, my soul. There was no question.
But I wasn’t about to argue. Jeb was convinced. There was certainty in his words—and undeniable resentment and hatred. He hated me; he hated Mom. Maybe blaming us was the only way he could reconcile what had happened to him and what he’d later done himself.
I nodded. “So, you found and killed my husband to get even?”
“That’s right. Walker always told Hunter and me that if you wanna hurt a son-of-a-bitch, you don’t hurt him, you hit where it’ll really sting—hurt the person they love most. I thought about going after Trudy.” He grinned again and I had a feeling I’d never be able to forget that twisted smile so far from anything joyous or friendly. “But Marc wassoeasy. So willing—a lamb to slaughter. Isn’t that how the saying goes?” He smiled again. “God, he hated you!”
