by Bev Elle
I remember Phil having lots of parties and I’m sure you were exposed to many things my parents shielded me from. I remember catching you smoking pot with those boys, and you going to prom with the girl with the worst reputation at our little Christian school. You mentioned having done many other things you’re not proud of, and I know you couldn’t resist the temptation that Philip’s upbringing, or lack thereof, afforded you.
I was serious when I said that nothing you’ve done could sway my faith in you, nor kill the love I have for you. You are my destiny and I won’t allow another few years in prison deter me from it.
Let me introduce you to your future: I’m Shanice Anderson Bailey, daughter of Isaiah and Brenda Bailey, sister of Ezekiel and Ezra Bailey. I am a nursing student at Stanford University. Purple is my favorite color. The Kings of Leon are my favorite band. I cry when I watch sappy romantic comedies. I read a book almost every week, simply because I love getting immersed into the lives of fictional characters. I love a man who has had my back since we were children, and I will never stop loving him.
Now I have to go study, but I will write again. Never fear that I won’t.
Yours always and forever,
Shanice
Letter writing is one of those lost arts that Trevor had never mastered. In this digital era, all he wanted to do was email and text Shanice, but he knew those modes of contact could be easily scrutinized. However, he felt like by the time he got her letter, the immediacy of response was lost. Especially when she could be struggling with something, or needed his shoulder to lean on. Getting his response a week later just didn’t cut it.
Donald Hemphill, of all people, gave him the answer to his dilemma.
“Your girl is in a college dormitory, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You know those hall payphones, the landlines, they’re available for use by everybody in the building, even though most students today have cell phones.”
“Right.”
“So, all you need is some money on your telephone card account, and you can call her on the payphone in her dorm.”
“You’re a genius, Hemphill.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Man, I could kiss you!”
“You do, and you’ll draw back a face with no lips.”
“You’ve got a billion dollars to recover through me. You can’t do that.”
“You don’t need lips to write code.”
“Oh, right.”
“Speaking of which. Get back to it, dude. I’m outta here in thirty minutes, and like I’ve told you a million times. You are not my only case.”
Trevor Landon Kyle /05555-055
FCI victorville
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. BOX 5555
VICTORVILLE, CA 61555
June 30, 2010
Dear Shanice:
You may not have Isaiah and Brenda Bailey’s blood, but you’re certainly their daughter! For the first two years I was locked up, your letters were my lifeline, my grip on reality, my only hope in this seemingly hopeless place. But it was your visit last week that finally convinced me your unwavering faith in me is not misplaced. I’m willing to accept it, because as you said, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
You put your complete trust and confidence in me the first day we met, but I’ve held myself away from you, because everyone else in my life left me. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that you would never forsake me until last week. For a little woman, you’re certainly not a pushover. You say I’m the one who schooled you, but I can’t remember being as strong for you as you’ve been for me over the years.
From this day forward, I’m yours in good times and bad, forever and always. What I hate now more than pushing you away after David and Elena died, or pushing you away again before I came here, was not realizing my mistake and acting on it while you were here. Thank God you didn’t take my irrational doubts to heart.
Since we were children, I’ve hoped for so much for both of us, despite my life taking tragic turn after turn. I’m so happy the Baileys were able to give you the stability you deserved. I can only hope when I’m released, we can take the time to build the kind of life we’ve always longed for… together.
I love you so much, Shanice. I’m sorry I didn’t say it while you were here in front of me, and I promise when I get out of here, I will not fail to say it, or to show it to you every day of our lives.
Eternally yours,
Trevor
P.S. - Please send me the phone number for the payphone on your dormitory hall.
Trevor couldn’t say that his time flew by, but it did go better now that he was back in contact with Shanice again. They still wrote letters, but he lived for the times when they had phone conversations. Their unorthodox courtship wasn’t what he would’ve wanted for her, but anytime he tried to apologize for it, she scolded him.
“Shut it, Trevor! Don’t you dare try and insinuate that you’re not good enough for me.”
“It’s true. You deserve so much better, Shanice.”
Her voice became infinitely softer. “Baby, listen to me. You did what you had to do to keep us all alive. That makes you a hero in my book.”
“What book are you reading, girl? One where the villain becomes the hero?” He hoped his teasing would lighten the heaviness he’d just dropped on her.
“One where the hero has a dark past with an evil uncle, but he thwarts the evil uncle’s plans and his character arc makes a complete one-eighty. Then the hero and the heroine live happily ever after.”
“I need to start reading from that book then, huh?”
Her response was always definitive. “Yes, you do.”
Their conversations and her letters are what kept him going. They talked about just about everything, and they came to know one another on the most intimate level possible emotionally. Physically would have to wait until he was free man. Shanice sometimes tried to engage him in more intimate conversations by phone, but he squashed that idea fast.
“I don’t need that. You know this, right?”
“I thought maybe since we can’t be together in the flesh, it’s something I can do to take the pressure off,” She said.
He insisted. “That’s not necessary.”
“So, you’ve given up on sex?”
“No. I didn’t say that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
It was so like his girl to push the envelope. Trevor was so proud to be able to call her that and so lucky to have her even though he was in this reprehensible place. “Shanice, I don’t want to ever treat you like these guys in here treat their women. Before you know it, I’ll be out of here. Then we can get married and do things the right way.”
He could her audible gasp. “You want to marry me?”
“Well, yeah, that’s the plan.”
“When were you going to clue me in to this plan of yours if I hadn’t asked you all these other questions?”
“Well, I wanted to wait until I was out of here, so I could do it at a restaurant or something, but you’re pushy.”
“Who are you calling pushy, Mister?”
“Shanice Anderson Bailey is who.”
She huffed. “If you weren’t where you are and you had the ability to call me right back, I’d hang up on you.”
“How do you know I’d call you right back?”
“Because you love me,” she said simply.
“Well, that’s true, but maybe I’d want to teach you a lesson and not call you right back.”
“As if!”
“Watch me. Goodbye Shanice… .”
“Trevor, if you hang us this phone… .”
“You’ll what?”
“Ooh, you make me want to strangle you.”
“But in a good way, right?”
“Look who’s talking dirty now?”
“I didn’t mean it in a dirty way. I—”
<
br /> “You what?”
He conceded defeat. “You win, Babe. I’ve got nothing.”
“Are you going to always let me win when we fight.”
“When we fight? You say it as if you expect it.”
“Even happily married couples fight, Trevor. My Mom and Dad did all the time.”
“Not Pastor Isaiah and Brenda?”
“Like cat and dog when it was about something either one of them were passionate about.”
“Like what?”
“Money, disciplining the boys or me, Dad saying something stupid. Oh, and money.”
Trevor’s heart sank. “Then we’re doomed.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When I get out of here, I’m going to be so broke I won’t be able to pay attention.”
“I’ll be taking the nursing boards around the time you get out so we won’t starve.”
“Shanice, I’m supposed to take care of you.”
“Where is that rule written?”
“It’s man code.”
“And who told you that?”
“Nobody. It’s just hard-wired into most men’s DNA to want to take care of his woman.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Come again?”
“If there’s one thing I learned living with my parents, it’s this: gender roles are not static. When my parents got married, they both worked and took care of each other. Mom, didn’t work when we moved to Orlando because it was cheaper to stay home and raise the boys daycare being what it was. Besides, Dad made enough to take care of all of us—most of the time. He’s so generous he sometimes got into trouble financially because he was always bailing someone out of something. That’s when they fell short and they’d fight over money. Mom went back to work when the boys went to middle school, so now they’re taking care of each other again.”
Trevor realized he was likely one of those people who made the Baileys fight over money. They’d stepped up to plate for him financially ever since he’d been incarcerated, and a few times even before that. He would just have to figure out a way to pull his weight legally when he got out.
“How’d you get so smart?” he asked.
“Book smart or common sense smart?”
“Both.”
“I had a lot of time on my hands growing up, because I was infatuated with this boy who saved me from some bullies when I was five.”
Trevor had to hurry up and get off the phone before the woman he loved heard him cry for the first time. He was so overcome with emotion he couldn’t speak for a few seconds.
“Do you remember why you did that, Trevor? All these years and I’ve never thought to ask until now.”
Trevor cleared his throat. He’d promised to be painfully honest with her, so he had to tell her. “My little sister, Natalie. You reminded me of her. Her death is what caused DCFS to take me into the system.”
“Oh, Trevor, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay now. Her death likely saved us both from so much other shit my Mom would’ve undoubtedly dragged us into.”
“The same with my mother’s death. If she’d lived, who knows what I would have become.”
“You’re a fighter, ‘Nice. You were always going to be all right.”
“You, too, Baby. And it doesn’t matter where you are now. You’re going to be all right, too.”
Trevor could only nod in agreement and hope his future bride was right, because currently, he had no clue how he was going to fix the mess he’d gotten them into. However, he went away from that conversation with a new resolve to make things right, and then figure out how to build a future for them.
PART TWO: The Evidence of Things Not Seen
Chapter Nineteen
June 27, 2014
Trevor Kyle shuffled in restraint chains to his exit interview with Special Agent Donald Hemphill. There was no eagerness on his part, even though he’d be free the following Monday. But he wouldn’t miss the hand and leg jewelry.
The guard escorting him stopped at one of the holding cells that masqueraded as a lawyer/client meeting room, and opened the door. Hemphill sat in the hard plastic chair on the opposite side of a metal table. After his restraints were removed by the guard, Trevor took the chair opposite the agent who’d visited him frequently asking for favors since he’d been locked up. They were on a first-name basis, but Trevor addressed him formally when he was being sarcastic or needed to make a point.
“You don’t look like a man who’s getting out of this joint in a couple of days, Trevor,” Hemphill said.
Truth be told, Trevor was not as happy as he should have been about leaving. Now he had no more leverage against the man who liked to call himself his foster father but who was nothing more than his legal guardian. He’d have to give Philip what he wanted or risk losing the only person who mattered to him in some horrific way he couldn’t do a damn thing about.
“What do you want, Donald?”
Donald looked down at a lone manila folder sitting neatly in front of him. “I’m going to tell you what I’ve discovered in the last couple of weeks, and you’re going to listen, so together we bring to justice the mastermind behind this crime for which you took the lone fall.”
Hemphill had cajoled, threatened, manipulated, enticed, and used all kinds of persuasion he could in the seven years Trevor had been in prison to get him to tell him the location of more than one billion dollars he’d stolen by hacking into each state’s unclaimed property accounts. Hemphill had also offered him deals to get him out of prison earlier, believing this would be the one incentive that would make Trevor talk, but he’d needed more. He’d made it clear there would have to be assurances made regarding the safety of Shanice Bailey and her family.
Trevor didn’t dare get his hopes up. He knew if there was anyone who could get inside the criminal mind enough to catch an oily scumbag like his uncle, it was Special Agent Donald Hemphill.
“Show me what you’ve got,” Trevor said. “Then I’ll let you know if we can deal.”
Hemphill smiled and pushed the folder toward him like he was moving a chess piece.
Within the hour after his exit interview, Trevor was out of his prison garb and wearing regular clothes for the first time in many years. It felt weird. He and Hemphill were making their way to Las Vegas, in what was undoubtedly a federal vehicle.
If he’d been smart enough to siphon off a few million of what his uncle had instructed him to steal, he would have had new identities and passports waiting for him and Shanice upon his release. They could’ve disappeared this weekend and not even have had to deal with his goddamned uncle at all. No one would have been able to find them, including the small cadre of federal agents Hemphill had working every angle.
Hindsight was twenty-twenty, of course, and additionally, if Trevor wanted to prove to Shanice he was indeed a better man than the federal government had proven him to be seven years ago, he needed to do it this way.
They were in the city limits of Las Vegas when Donald shared some pertinent information with him.
“Shanice Bailey is already here.”
Trevor slipped his hand underneath Hemphill’s tie and twisted. He tightened it like a noose around the agent’s neck. “What the fuck kind of games are you playing, Hemphill?”
Hemphill gasped and pulled the car over. “Listen…What would you have done if you’d known a couple of hours ago? Agonized over it all the way here?” Trevor released loosened his grip but didn’t remove his hand from the loop of the tie. Hemphill said, “She sweet-talked your release date out of your frazzled caseworker and came to surprise you. There was nothing we could’ve done to stop her, unless we’d gone in to talk to her without your knowledge. We wanted you to take this deal, not piss you off by talking to your girlfriend first.”
“Where is she?” Trevor yelled.
Hemphill pried Trevor’s hand away from his neck and shook him off. “Do that again, and our deal is off the goddamn table.” He adjusted hi
s tie and straightened himself out. “She’s staying with a friend who graduated with her a couple of weeks ago. Apparently this girl’s father is friends with the pastor.”
Trevor shook his head. “Is there anything else you need to tell me before this shit goes down next week? I need to figure out how to get Shanice out of harm’s way before I meet my dear old uncle Monday morning.”
“We’ve got a room for you at the New York, New York Hotel. Our treat.” Hemphill reached into his inside suit pocket and handed Trevor an envelope. “Here’s a little pocket change to get you around while you handle your personal business. We’ll touch base Sunday afternoon about the sting operation.”
They rode in silence until he pulled into a gated community north of the Air Force base. “Call a cab or something when you get ready to check into the hotel. It wouldn’t do to have me hanging around your girl and her friend looking like a federal agent.”
Trevor sighed. “Look, Donald, I’m sorry. I’m not rational at all when it comes to Shanice, okay? You should’ve told me sooner. If you want my full cooperation, you need to keep her out of this as much as possible.”
Hemphill waved him off. “We’ll figure out together how to keep her out of Philip Kyle’s crosshairs until we get him into custody. I’ll see you tomorrow, ready to rock and roll.”
“Thanks, man,” Trevor said and opened the car door.
As Hemphill sped off, Trevor realized the bag containing all his worldly goods was still in the trunk. He could only hope someone would drop it off in that room the feds were paying for.
Chapter Twenty
Trevor went to the door and knocked. He was so nervous and wondered how Shanice would react. A girl he assumed was Shanice’s friend answered the door.
“Yes?” she said.
He looked in and saw Shanice eating Doritos. When she looked up and saw Trevor, she dropped the bag and ran over it, and he could hear the remaining contents being crushed. She collided with Trevor on the stoop and jumped into his waiting arms. She wrapped her legs around his torso, and he hefted her into his arms. Tears rained down her cheeks as she bombarded him with sloppy kisses all over his face.