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“Her name is Shirley. She’s half-blind. I found her wandering around on my front porch one morning, and the rest is hairless history.”
He doesn’t laugh.
A minute passes as we both stare at Shirley. Although she is pretending to be asleep, her good eye is locked on Rhett. She’s curious, like me.
Rhett blinks, shakes his head, then refocuses on the letters. “Okay. Tell me everything.”
I take a deep breath and recite the same story I told Officer Marino two weeks earlier. I tell Rhett about the black skull sweatshirt the person who delivered the letters was wearing, and the fact that Jesse Taylor, the missing Thorncrest man, was last seen wearing something similar. I tell him about the blood spatters on the necklace, the unidentified fingerprint on it, and that neither Jesse’s prints, nor his, were on it. I tell Rhett that the necklace was not at the scene when police photographed it, nor was it on my deceased mother. I opt out of telling him that the cops’ interpretation of all this is that it means either Rhett had an accomplice or paid someone to deliver the necklace to me—notthat Rhett is innocent.
Rhett listens intently, hanging onto my every word.
When I finish speaking, he remains silent, unmoving, letting it all soak in. Finally, he removes his hands from his lap, picks up the coffee and takes a sip. Then another, and another. The entire mug is drained in under five seconds.
I lift from the table, retrieve the pot, and top off his now empty mug. I wonder if it is the first time he’s had coffee in twenty years. Or coffee that doesn’t taste like dirt, I should say. I get a sudden rush of sadness, of pity, for him, and also guilt for playing such a huge part in his going to prison. I know that it was my testimony that sealed his conviction. It was my fault.
I top off my coffee, take my place across the table from him. “So. What do you think about it all?”
“I want to know more about Jesse Taylor, the guy who likely saw the man who framed me.”
“The man who really killed my mother.”
He nods and something flickers between us. Though we have very different motivations, we both have a lot at stake in finding the man who wrote the letters.
“I want to know about Jesse’s family,” he continues. “Where they live, what they do…”
It occurs to me how long Rhett has been quarantined from society. How much has happened in Thorncrest in the last twenty years? Children he might have known then are now productive members of society. Rhett’s former schoolmates are likely completely different people now, adults with families, jobs, mountains of debt, high cholesterol.
Twenty years ago, when Rhett was free, cell phones were relatively new. The iPhone hadn’t been invented. No smart phones. (I think I carried a beeper, if I remember correctly.) There was no social media, no electric vehicles, no Netflix. No digital music—CDs only. I can’t help but chuckle, picturing Rhett searching for a CD player to reconnect with Nickelback. Actually, no… Rhett looks more of a Linkin Park type of guy.
Jesse Taylor would have been eight when Rhett went to jail. Janet and her husband in their mid-thirties. I was nineteen when it happened.
Nineteen.
I wonder if Rhett remembers what I looked like back then.
Is he disappointed in what he sees now?
I tell him everything I know about Jesse and his family, describing his mother as the perfect housewife, his father as the trusted town doctor. I tell him about the gossip that Jesse had once been arrested for fighting and attempted theft.
“And how long has he been missing?” Rhett asks.
“I don’t know… a few weeks at this point.”
“And no one has seen him other than you?”
“As far as I know, that’s correct. He seems to have just vanished.”
“Not if he came to your house four times.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“So he’s probably still in the area.”
I shrug.
“Who is in his circle of friends, do you know?”
“No, I haven’t looked into it that much.”
