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I didn’t let myself cry the day I was sentenced to life in prison for murdering my husband. I didn’t even let myself cry the day I signed away my rights as Amelia’s mother. I wanted her to grow up in a home full of happiness and love. I didn’t want her to grow up resenting me, believing I’d murdered her father. Her father who had been considered a hero to everyone but me.
I set the shoe aside and go through the other items in the box. Her birth announcement. A teensy-tiny sleeper from Granny with cute pink hearts all over it. Amelia wore it home from the hospital.
The only reason I have the box is because I’d kept it at Granny’s house. My husband would’ve destroyed it. Destroying my things was one of the ways he’d kept me in line.
I put everything back in the box, open the envelope, and take out the twophotos.
My baby. My beautiful baby.
My heart splits in half all over again, the endless ache bleeding into my body. “I love you. And I miss you so much.” My voice sounds rough and raw, the words pushed past a too-tight throat. I sniff and close my eyes against the pain.
I don’t even know what she looks like now. All I have are the two photos. The two photos I didn’t dare look at while in prison. It would have hurt too much.
I open my eyes. In the first picture, Amelia is sitting on a blanket outside, smiling and drooling on her pretty pink dress. I put the picture down next to me.
She’s a toddler in the second photo. She was grinning at the camera and showing me her stuffed doggy when I took the photo. It joins the other one on the bed.
I go over to my purse on the dresser and pull out the sealed envelope Florence gave me when I was released from prison. I tear it open and remove the photo of five-year-old Amelia. She’s drawing with crayons and making a silly face for the camera. Her adoptive parents—my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law—must have taken it.
It’s not even a recent photo. It’s two years old.
I stroke her beautiful golden-brown waves, so much like mine before I became a blond. The new hair color is just one more thing separating me from my daughter. One more thing to show she’s not mine.
I know I’ll never see my daughter again. Wouldn’t dare to try.
I don’t know how I could see her without dying even further on the inside. To not hear her call me Mommy, but to hear her say the term to another woman.
I don’t even know if her adoptive parents would be okay with me seeing her. They might be afraid I would tell her that I am her real mother.
I would never do that.
But maybe…maybe Craig and Grace will let me see her. As a friend of the family.
But first, I need to change my life around.
I need a job and I need to prove prison didn’t change me.
I need to prove under the broken shell of the woman my husband and the prison system left behind, I am the same girl I was before my life took a wrong turn. A girl with dreams and goals and stars in her eyes.
* * *
I jolt awake,my heart rate speeding. It takes me a few seconds to remember where I am. The house creaks in the wind that has picked up since I fell asleep. But the sound isn’t what woke me.
Tears dampen my face and pillow and sweat covers my body, the details of the nightmare a foggy memory.
I climb out of the bed and walk to the window. The cold air prickles my bare arms and legs, and I shiver.
I pull on a sweater and peek through the gap in the curtains. The world outside is blanketed in the glow of the full moon.I’m okay.The monsters that haunt my nightmares are locked away or buried deep in the ground.
I grab five magazines from the nearest stack, knowing I won’t be able to fall back asleep just yet. I don’t pay attention to the magazine covers or their titles.
I turn on the bedside lamp, climb into the bed, and spread out the magazines. It’s only then I realize they aren’t all in English. Two are in German. TheVoguemagazine is in French. The other two magazines—gardening magazines—are in English.
I took high school Spanish, so the German and French magazines are a lost cause. But that doesn’t stop me from flipping through the FrenchVogue. The magazine is dated March 1975.
Once I’m finished checking it out, I put it on what will become a new pile. There’s bound to be someone interested in old editions of the French magazine. Maybe someone who is into the history of fashion.
Next up is the German magazine. This one is from 2001 and appears to be some sort of women’s magazine. The recipes look delicious. Too bad I don’t know a word of German. It goes into a different pile. The German-language pile. The second German magazine quickly joins its companion.
