And When I Die, page 41
The only visitors she was allowed were her parents. Her mother came dutifully, every week, writing her reams of letters between visits and filling her commissary with whatever meager dollars she could. In the beginning, her father used to come with her mother every week, but over time, his visits trickled down to once a month, to eventually, a handful of times a year. The visits always left Ruthie drained and miserable. She couldn’t look them in the eye, so ashamed of how she’d let them down. Her mother always acted like everything was normal, chattering on about how she’d run into Mrs. Falk at the grocery store and how big her daughter was getting, or Patricia’s swanky new job or how she’d heard Dawn was studying abroad in Italy. Ruthie could see the strain in her mother’s face, the pained realization of how much her daughter was missing out on. Unlike her mother, her father didn’t try to fill the silence with nonstop babble, but rather stiff questions about how she was getting on or the occasional rambling story about the baseball game or boxing match he’d watched on TV the night before.
She never wrote a single letter to a friend. The few she received—opened by the guards—were thrown into the trash by her. Ruthie couldn’t bear to read soft pink stationery filled with stories about dances and classes and parties and eventually colleges and boyfriends.
At night was when she cried. Sometimes the tears were silent and unrelenting, other times a flash flood—brief and violent.
Ruthie despised the mandated counseling every Tuesday (individual) and Thursday (group). Her counselor told her she had anger issues, an inability to control her temper, a penchant for lashing out when she didn’t get what she wanted. Ruthie didn’t think that was true. Everyone had a temper. Everyone got mad. She wasn’t an out-of-control barbarian—not like these other girls, the girls who pulled screws out of the walls or made shivs out of combs and toothbrushes. Some of these girls had never been to school, didn’t even know how to brush their hair, didn’t understand the mechanics of soap and a washcloth, or how to use a fork.
No. She wasn’t like these girls.
Ruthie had one bad moment. One. She wouldn’t have another.
The only positive she found during those long, miserable days was a talent for graphic design, nurtured in opportunities to leave kitchen and laundry duty behind in exchange for doing jobs for a local printer, though she wondered what the actual clients would think if they knew a convicted felon was designing their birthday invitations and real estate brochures.
As her twenty-first birthday loomed, Ruthie was convinced she’d be sent to serve the rest of her sentence in Huntsville, which terrified her. She’d earned her high school diploma and took as many graphic design courses as she could through the local community college. While she mostly kept her nose clean, there’d been a few skirmishes with other girls that landed her in solitary confinement, another time when she had trashed the meager contents of her cell in frustration, all of which she knew would work against her. Dr. and Mrs. Kendall would oppose any kind of early release. She hadn’t even wanted to go to the hearing, but her attorney said she had to and her fear of Huntsville came true. She was transferred to the adult facility where she served out the rest of her sentence and was released at the age of twenty-seven.
Her first night home, it was clear she couldn’t go back to being Ruthie Stowers, resident of Houston, Texas, youngest daughter of Edgar and Grace Stowers. Her mother’s fluttering, her father’s awkward disregard, the fear of running into Dr. and Mrs. Kendall, Lyz or Sharla—a random stranger—all ready to sear her flesh all over again with ‘M’ for murderer. She might not have been behind bars anymore, but the longer she stayed there, she’d never be free.
She needed a fresh start.
Which meant she could be anyone she wanted to be.
Ruthie hadn’t told her mother her plan. It would be easier that way in the long run. Her father would probably be relieved. She’d called her public defender and asked how she could legally change her name. She’d taken the meager wages she’d saved during her incarceration to become Erica Dane, using the rest to buy a train ticket to Chicago after closing her eyes and letting her finger fall on a map.
On a Tuesday morning in September, after responding to her mother that lasagna for dinner that night sounded great, she waited until her parents left for work, before sliding the suitcase she’d packed the night before from underneath the bed. She left the goodbye letter she’d written propped up against the napkin holder on the kitchen table, before she ducked around the side of the house with the shovel from the garage to dig up the plastic baggie holding the lip gloss and gold Tiffany heart charm bracelet she’d buried in the backyard a few days after taking it from Shannon’s bloody wrist. She’d put the soil-covered bag in the pocket of her jeans, picked up her suitcase, and said goodbye to Ruthie Stowers forever.
The pieces fell into place so easily once she got to Chicago. After a week at a fleabag hotel which would have terrified Ruthie, but didn’t bother the ten-years incarcerated Erica, she found work as a designer for a small printing company and rented a clean and quiet studio on the North side. She scrimped for a new nose. She scrimped for a shiny set of veneers. She scrimped for a cut and color every eight weeks. The stubborn weight she’d carried most of her life had dropped off her frame in prison and stayed off thanks to obsessive exercise and pecking at bird-like meals, the glorious price of all that scrimping.
And every morning, Erica would look in the mirror and smile at the woman gazing back at her, so thrilled to finally be clutching thin and glamorous with both hands.
The first time someone asked where she was from, without even thinking, she said Ohio. She made the rest up as she went along, inventing the tragedy of dead parents in a house fire, simultaneously weaving fantastical tales about a charmed, wealthy adolescence as the most popular girl in town, a homecoming beauty with the world at her feet. Sometimes, she actually believed she’d floated through this wonderful, enchanted childhood. That was the trick of lying. In order to convince everyone else, you had to take it as the gospel for yourself.
Mostly, she kept to herself. Work, quiet dinners with a handful of close friends, and a giant city to explore.
Over the years, there were a few awkward romances with well-meaning simpletons who worried about their cholesterol and read the New York Times on Sundays because they thought it made them sound smart to say they read the New York Times on Sundays. Eventually, she gave up on the hope of marriage and a family. And then, when she was thirty (she told him she was twenty-five and to her shock, he believed her), the blindingly wealthy Jay Mitchell dropped from the sky and swept her off her feet to a mansion in Lake Forest and the lavish life she’d always lied about having, outrivaling anything in her Dynasty-Dallas-Falcon-Crest fantasies. Money was no object, scrimping a long-forgotten memory, security and comfort her now daily companions. It empowered her, this deep pool of prosperity, emboldened her to do whatever she wanted with no consequences. After all, who would dare cross the wife of a global billionaire?
Five years later, she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl they named Jordan Grace. Eight years later, to her utter shock, came another beautiful baby girl, Kennedy Marie. Jay’s business thrived, her business thrived. She had friends, a happy marriage to a man she adored, a beautiful family.
Everything.
And now, it was all gone.
100
AVA
Ava groaned as she ran a finger across the tiny bump in her neck bulging with an ingrown hair, a supplement to the whisker she discovered under her chin yesterday, the hard bristle too short to pluck, yet long enough to make a sharp scratching noise against her fingernail. A one-string banjo.
The clock on her dash told her that despite her best efforts, she would come blowing through the door ten minutes late due to Friday night traffic, as every street in Lake Forest seemed to heave with vehicles. She continued circling for a spot, determined not to valet. About thirty seconds before resigning herself to the inevitability, the white lights of a minivan backing out of a space near the entrance elicited a hallelujah.
As Ava parked, she ran the pad of her thumb against the chin hair, her fingers itching to dig into it with her tweezers, imagining the release when she plucked that sucker. She gathered up her purse, keys, and phone, ready to sprint for Authentico. For the first time in two months, she’d actually read the selection for tonight’s book club, and was eager to participate in the discussion.
That she’d found time to do anything the past few months was a minor miracle. She’d been accosted by media, strangers, and friends, both casual and close about how she’d “cracked” the Whitney Dean case. There were offers of book deals, an infinite stream of interview requests, and offers for reality shows of all things. She was inclined to turn it all down flat, but also didn’t want to be rushed either way.
Erica’s sentencing had been standing room only and Ava had garnered just as much attention as the defendant. No one was surprised by Erica’s life sentence, both due to the brutality of Whitney’s murder and Erica’s status as a repeat offender. She was awaiting transfer to the penitentiary soon and Ava suspected once that happened, that would be the last anyone heard from her. Dr. Kendall had sobbed brokenly as he thanked her for exposing Erica, while Lyz and Sharla seemed determined to make her their new best friend. Lauren had showed up at her house one night and the two women cried for hours, Lauren incredulous that Erica had brought her a fucking casserole.
The trill of her phone in her hand pushed another growl from her lips. She frowned at the caller ID, a blocked number. Probably another reporter. Ava’s finger hovered over the ignore button, but something—she would never know what—compelled her to take the call.
She sighed and hit ‘answer.’
“Hello?”
“You have a call from an inmate at Lake County Adult Corrections Facility,” an automated voice spit into her ear.
Ava stopped in the middle of the street, her heart thumping, terror scurrying beneath her skin like ants.
Erica.
A series of beeps sounded before Erica’s voice crackled through the receiver.
“Ava?”
She gulped and nodded. “Erica. How—how are you?”
Erica laughed and heat flamed across Ava’s face.
“How do you think I’m doing?”
“Erica, this really isn’t a good time.”
“Just let me say what I need to say.”
A car honked for Ava to move. She jogged to the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, the phone sweaty in her palm, her head swimming.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“You never liked me, did you?”
Ava blanched. Of all the things she pictured Erica saying to her, their first conversation since that day in the grocery store, asking whether she liked her wasn’t one of them. She ran her tongue across her bottom lip. “I always thought you were sweet,” she said cautiously.
“But you didn’t like me,” Erica pressed. “Not the way you liked Lauren, or even that nutjob Regina.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to compare friendships—”
“We’re not friends,” Erica said. “We never were.”
“Erica—”
“You know, in all the time I’ve known you, you never asked me out for a drink or lunch. Not once. I would always have to ask you. And even then, it was always, ‘Sure, let me check my schedule,’ or ‘I’ll get back to you.’ But you never did. Ever. Now, if Jay called, you came running. But if it was me? You couldn’t be bothered. And the one time, the one time, you actually extended an invitation to me, you were setting me up.”
“To be fair, Erica, my travel schedule has always been—”
Erica half-laughed, half-groaned. “Oh, my God, enough with the bullshit. Even now, you can’t admit that you just didn’t like me. For the love of everything, have an honest moment.”
Ava clicked her tongue, looking down at the sidewalk, the irony of Erica lecturing her on honesty tickling a rumble of manic laughter in her gut. She was right, though. It was time to drop the pretense. Niceties and the mask of social graces no longer mattered.
“Okay, Erica, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I didn’t like you.”
“Ha! Finally, some honesty.”
“Erica, like I said, this really isn’t a good time—”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t you like me? What did I ever do to you?”
“Sometimes, you just don’t like people.”
“But there was something specific about me, wasn’t there?”
She sighed. She’d already peeled back the Band-Aid. It was time to rip it off. “To be honest, I always thought you tried too hard.” She smiled wryly and shook her head. “Like you didn’t know how to be yourself.”
Erica scoffed then fell silent. Ava looked at her watch. She was creeping up on twenty minutes late.
“Listen, Erica, I have to go—”
“It was Melody, wasn’t it? That day outside of Coffee City? She recognized me, didn’t she, told you all about me.”
She sighed. Why Erica was pressing about this now baffled her, as she knew that’s exactly what had happened. Perhaps the itch of hearing the words from Ava’s mouth was all-consuming.
“That’s what started it, yes,” she said.
“So, you decided to hunt me down. Out me.” She snorted. “Ruin my life.”
“Erica … you ruined your life.”
“Why couldn’t you just … leave it all alone?”
Ava ran her tongue along her bottom lip, her eyes floating to the sky. “Because you murdered a girl. Again. Just like they said you would.”
“One more minute,” the electronic voice said, cutting into the call.
“God, you’re just like her.”
“Who?” Ava asked.
“So dismissive, so superior. All you pretty girls, all you cool girls, you’re all the same.”
Ava straightened up, rankled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Thirty seconds.”
“Whitney, Shannon … you. Ugly little freaks like me … we’ll never be good enough for you.”
The line went dead. Ava looked at the phone, the sting of tears buzzing behind her eyes. A laughing couple swept past her heading toward The Gallery, while a gaggle of twentysomething girls spotted each other and ran into each other’s arms, screaming with laughter. Just another Friday night of happy oblivious people living their lives. She dug into her purse in search of a Kleenex, blowing her nose and dabbing her eyes with the last two in the pack. Erica had all but called her a mean girl, a label she never would have ascribed to herself. Not in a million years.
But it was true. She had shunned Erica, because as the woman said, she just didn’t like her. Teased her with promises of drinks and dinner dates, uttered vows she never intended to keep. Wasn’t that how the wheels of polite society turned? Feigning interest in people you didn’t care for, indulging in vague small talk, engaging in pleasantries and platitudes all to give the shallow appearance of being a ‘nice person,’ a ‘good girl.’
Another laughing couple shuffled past her, chattering about getting tickets for Ravinia, while a harried mother and father shuttled their brood of three toward the front door for a night of family fun. Life going on. Never stopping. Always moving.
And so would she.
Ava blew her nose one last time before squaring her shoulders and heading to the door, ready for her book club discussion. A round of drinks. Appetizers. Another round of drinks. Pouncing on Kyle when she got home. Curling around him in the morning. Kissing her daughter’s forehead at the breakfast table.
Her life would go on.
It was time to forget Erica Mitchell ever existed.
Because she never really did.
101
ERICA AND RUTHIE
The long, agitated buzz announcing bedtime sounded, followed by the clank, clank, clank of fluorescent lights going black, one by one, like a row of falling dominos. Her cell was dark, except for the slices of bright white floodlight from the yard glaring through the small rectangle of window lined with metal bars.
She’d be transferred sometime within the next forty-five days to Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, wherever the hell that was, for life.
Life.
Erica rubbed the hard knot of fear and sadness that had blown up inside her like a balloon the day of her arrest, settling in like a phantom appendage, like one of those parasitic twins that grew inside the other, the host forced to lug around bones, teeth, and limbs they had no use for.
And indeed, no one had any use for her. Jordan, unsurprisingly, had refused to see her, spurning all of Erica’s overtures to at least hear her side. Letters came back unopened, phone calls sent to voicemail. Not one so-called friend had come to visit or offer thoughts and prayers.
However, the biggest, most stunning betrayal had come from Jay, her warrior, her protector, the man who had always unequivocally had her back. He’d gone apoplectic with rage upon her arrest, his fury exploding in a barrage of blistering attacks upon learning he’d been married to a convicted murderer for all these years, and one who, even worse, had done it again, in almost the same circumstances. And just like that, he’d vanquished her, was granted an uncontested divorce inside of two months, and vowed to keep the girls from her. Her decades as a loving and loyal wife discounted like a puff of smoke on the wind.
Her mind drifted to seeing that woman, Kate, in court a few days ago at her sentencing and the flummoxed, disapproving pinch of her face at realizing Erica was the woman at Middlefork Preserve that day dissuading her from going to the police about Whitney’s last words.
