Bill is running the water in his bathroom. The sound rushes through the wall and under the one-inch gap beneath the connecting door. Mrs. Munson had called up to us three times as we climbed the stairs to say that the whole house was replumbed and wired with central heat, as if we might not understand the $300 price tag per room. I bounce lightly on the bed, running my fingers over the path of tiny stitches of red and yellow tulip quilt. I want to tell Mrs. Munson that her accommodations are worth every penny.
Lydia would love this room with the cheery lemon walls and the grim faces of dead people staring off the dresser. The iron lamp with a gold-fringed shade that glows like a tiny fire. The ice chips clicking against the window, chattering teeth.
She would lie on this bed and construct a doomed romance for the gauzy antique wedding dress that hangs like a ghost in the half-open wardrobe, and a more terrifying tale about the door to another dimension that hides in the shadows behind it. Maybe she’d combine the stories into one. This night would race ahead, a splendid, radiant adventure. We would be girls again, before monsters and devastating words, our imaginations locked together.
There’s a short knock on the connecting door.
“Come on in, Bill,” I say immediately.
Bill hesitates on the threshold, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that must have been hidden under his button-down. “I found toothbrushes in a cabinet in my bathroom. Want one?” I slide off the bed and walk over.
“Thanks.” I pick blue over yellow. “I could use a glass of wine, too. Maybe a shot of tequila.”
“I don’t think that’s stocked in the bathroom cabinet. I’m getting a bottle of water from the little fridge in the hall. Want one?”
“Sure.”
He disappears into his room before I can tell him to use my door to the outside hall. We are being so very polite. Earlier tonight, before we headed to the execution, Bill had punched a button on his computer and officially filed Terrell’s habeas corpus appeal with the federal court. It emphasizes the “junk science” DNA results on the red hair, the overwhelming statistics on faulty witness ID, and a statement from me, the living victim who thinks the real Black-Eyed Susan killer might still be stalking her and is willing to testify to it.
No mention of mysterious black-eyed Susan plantings or a buried book of Poe in Lydia’s back yard or a tooth in an old U-Haul box.
I have wished, more than once, that I had kept the sick piece of poetry I found under my tree house instead of ripping it to shreds and throwing away the pill bottle it came in. It might have been impossible to retrieve DNA or fingerprints from the paper or plastic all these years later, but it was tangible proof that I wasn’t making it up.
Bill’s habeas petition is far short of what he wanted to file at this point, but he is hoping it is enough for the judge to grant a hearing. He’s hoping that Jo will shake more loose from the bones in the meantime.
“Here you go,” Bill says. “I see you’ve got cable TV, too. It’s just a little hard to see around these tree trunk bedposts. Did you reach Lucas?”
“It’s all good. He’s got it covered. Charlie’s asleep.”
“Can I sit down for a second?”
“Sure.”
He pulls the straight-back chair from beside the dresser and sits on a needlepointed seat of roses. I reassume my position on the corner of the bed.
“You asked the other day if there’s hope,” Bill says. “After today… I just think it’s better if I’m honest. I think it is likely that Terrell is going to die. He’s on a runaway train. I know today was tough. Meeting Terrell. The execution. It doesn’t matter how you feel about the death penalty. I was all for the death penalty five years ago and it’s just as fucking grim either way.”
I’m stunned by this admission. I had never imagined him with a single doubt.
“Two things happened for me to change my mind. The duh lawyer moment when I realized that you’re never going to find a rich white guy on that gurney. And the Angie moment. She made me get to know a couple of guys on Death Row. Guilty ones, like a guy who broke in to a back yard high on meth and shot an elderly woman sitting in the garden in her wheelchair, so he could run inside and steal her purse. Angie didn’t think I could do this job to her satisfaction until I understood that it wasn’t just about proving innocence. That I needed to be all in. To understand that men on Death Row were human beings who did horrible things but that didn’t mean they were horrible things. The men that I’ve met who are sitting on Death Row are not the same men who committed those crimes. They are sober. Born again. Repentant. Or bat-shit crazy.” He eases back in the chair. “Occasionally, but not often, innocent.”
I wonder how long he’s been holding in this speech and why he chose tonight to give it. “I don’t know where I am on the death penalty,” I say. “I’m just… not… there.” I have promises to keep.
“And Terrell?”
“I can’t talk about Terrell.”
He nods. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”
As soon as he shuts the door between us, I’m desperate to wash away everything about this day. I enter a bathroom both bygone and modernly appointed, strip off all of my clothes, and lay them on the counter. I dread putting them on in the morning. They’re tainted by death. But I’d brought nothing else in my backpack-just a couple of PowerBars, a water bottle, a spool of silk thread and needles for an experiment in lace-making. And, at the last minute, I’d tossed the testimony inside, mostly in case Bill asked if I’d read it. I hadn’t. I’d opened the envelope, pulled out the papers, and stuck them right back in.
I push aside the shower curtain and crank the knob. The hot water responds, silky, hot, and immediate. I wash everything three times before stepping onto slick white subway tile and reluctantly tugging on the day’s underwear and a white cotton tank that had been my ineffective effort at winter layering. I towel-dry my hair into a frenzy of curls, too exhausted to use the expensive ceramic blow dryer on the counter.
I slip into chilly sheets, shivering, trying not to think about the grieving mother who raced to a morgue tonight. Who hoped, for the first time in years, to touch the body of her son, a killer, while it was still warm.
At 4:02 A.M., my eyes pop open. I’m gasping for breath as if someone just snatched a pillow from my face.
Lydia.
Cool light streams through the windows. The winter storm, asleep. My mind, racing.
To Charlie, safe at home, tangled in her comforter. I picture her breathing softly, in and out, and I breathe in rhythm with her. To Lydia, holding the paper bag to my face after a race, telling me to breathe, and I do. In and out.
Lydia, Lydia, Lydia. She’s invaded this room. The old Lydia, who checked my pulse, and the other one, who is scratching to get out of Bill’s envelope in my backpack.
Did I just miss the clues? Or are all of us just one betrayal, even one sentence, away from never speaking to each other again? I always, always defended my best friend. Even Granddaddy, a fan of her rabid imagination, wasn’t completely sure.
He asked once: “What do you see in Lydia?”
“She’s like no one else,” I had replied, a little defensively. “And loyal.”
She changed in the month before the trial. The old Lydia made fun of the push-up Wonderbra. She stuck her hands under her breasts, arranged them into little mountains and mocked the Eva Herzigova billboards. Look me in the eyes and tell me that you love me. She cocked her knee, planted her hands on her hips, thrust out her chest, and drawled: Who cares if it’s a bad hair day?
The new Lydia bought a Wonderbra and strapped it on. She complained that all high school boys wanted was a blank slate to draw their pencil on. Her grades dipped into the A minuses. She renounced Dr Peppers and Sonic cheese tots, and worst of all, she stopped her incessant, encyclopedic chatter. I knew I should press her, but I was trapped in my own head.