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Not ten feet from me, a man looms over my garden, standing square center in the single sunbeam that has escaped the clouds above. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, his eyes black as coal. He is not smiling.
I recognize him instantly. My stomach flies to my feet, my heart stuttering in my chest.
Rhett Cohen was an imposing presence before he went to prison, but now, the man is nothing short of monstrous. Prison has hardened him, literally—by about twenty pounds of pure muscle. His body looks as if it has been sculpted from stone, the lines of his jaw razor-sharp, his arms swollen and corded with sinew. Once staggeringly sexy, Rhett Cohen is now the type of man who would make you cross to the other side of the street.
The thin gray T-shirt he is wearing is stained and too snug, his jeans horribly wrinkled and also too tight around the thighs. I realize that these must be the clothes he was arrested in, twenty years earlier. Which means, he has literallyjustbeen released from jail.
And is now here at my house.
I slowly turn, stand, and face the man who was convicted of stabbing my mother to death.
A moment passes. We don’t speak, just stare at each other. Him, a massive, ominous presence; me, the total opposite in a white tank top, pair of baggy boyfriend jeans, and hideous black gardening kneepads strapped around my knees. I remove the straw hat teetering on the top of my head and smooth the hair away from my face.
He speaks.
“I want to see the letters.”
Like tires rolling over gravel, his voice carries the deep grit of someone who hasn’t spoken more than a few words in years.
“What letters?” I say, feigning ignorance while I take a second to wrap my head around my current situation. I am not scared, I notice, and realize then that I do, unequivocally, believe that Rhett is innocent.
“I’m talking about the letters delivered to you from the person who killed your mother,” he responds, his tone cold and callous.
“How did you know where I live?”
“I looked you up.”
He is so intense. It makes me self-conscious.
“They let you out? Of prison?”
He opens his arm:Yes, obviously, because I’m standing here.
“Because of the letters?” I ask.
“No. Because I served my sentence. Where are the letters?”
“I—I don’t have them. I gave them to the police.”
“Do you have copies?”
Of course I have copies. I have many copies hidden in various, inconspicuous places throughout my house in case I lose one—or something happens to me.
“Why don’t you go ask the detective to see them?” I ask.
“I didn’t kill your mother,” he responds.
“The fingerprints on the knife found in the woods that night suggest otherwise.”
“I was framed. This is why I want to see the letters.”
“Why? What good does it do now?”
“Because, Miss Stone, I am going to find the man who framed me and I am going to kill him.”
13
Sylvia
