The Perfect Letter

by Chris Harrison

  “Isn’t that what happened, Miss Merrill?”

  “No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”

  “What was that?”

  “Jake didn’t kill Dale over the steroids.”

  “How can you say so? You know he’s already pleaded guilty to the drugs charge, Miss Merrill.”

  “Jake didn’t kill Dale over the steroids. Jake didn’t kill anyone at all. He didn’t go get the gun.” She rushed forward, her mouth dry as dust. “It was me. I got the gun. I’m the one who shot Dale Tucker.”

  A murmur of surprise went up across the courtroom. She didn’t look at her grandfather or Ben Rhodes or the prosecutor, the judge or jury. She didn’t look at anyone but Jake, whose face across from her was a mask of horror, his blue eyes shocked. No, he mouthed at her. Leigh, don’t.

  After the murmur died down, the prosecutor recovered himself and said, “You don’t really expect the court to believe that, do you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You wanted the truth. It’s the truth.”

  “Miss Merrill, may I remind you you’re under oath? That perjury is a serious offense? You’ve already admitted to one lie today. Are you sure you want to add another?” His voice fairly dripped with condescension. “It’s admirable that you’d like to protect your ex-boyfriend, but perjuring yourself is not the way to do it. You’d both go to jail, you realize, for lying under oath.”

  Leigh hesitated. She hadn’t thought about perjury. She hadn’t expected that they would not believe her. She’d only thought that the truth was something she owed Jake, that she would prove to him she was still worthy of his love and he’d forgive her. She’d thought the truth would make everything simple.

  What do you do when you finally tell the truth, but people have already decided to believe the lie?

  She was making another horrible mistake. She was too late. It was all useless—the truth, the lie. All of it.

  Across the courtroom, Jake widened his eyes at her. No, he mouthed again. Don’t do this.

  She looked back down at her lap. Her fingers looked like they belonged to someone else. Her clothes felt like lead weights, pulling her down. She wanted to run, far from Texas, far from the courtroom. She closed her eyes and imagined herself standing up, walking out the door of the courtroom, and running away, running free. Running until her heart burst and her legs collapsed. Running until she found a place where no one knew her, where she could start over.

  “Now, let’s get back to the real story of what happened, Miss Merrill. No more fairy tales, please. Can you do that?”

  It took a minute for Leigh to come back to herself, a long minute in which she could feel the impatience of the people in the courtroom, the prosecutor, even the judge. “All right,” she said finally, and looked back down at her hands. “I’m sorry. I promise to tell the truth from now on.” A lie. Another lie.

  The prosecutor smiled. He was back in familiar territory now, thought he knew exactly where he was going, but he didn’t know anything. No one did.

  “Okay, then. Where were we? Yes—how Jake killed Dale over five thousand dollars’ worth of illegal steroids.”

  He kept talking, asking Leigh questions, and she answered them, her voice robotic. She had tried to stop the machinery of justice, but it hadn’t worked. That machinery was moving inexorably to convict the man she loved, and she was too weak to stop it. She was too weak, because everyone thought that she, Leigh Merrill, was incapable of cold-blooded murder. They thought it was a joke, a last-ditch Hail Mary pass meant to spare Jake from going to prison.

  Everyone was wrong.

  For months Leigh’s own conscience had been a millstone around her neck, threatening to pull her to the bottom of the river, and as she sat on the witness stand, she knew if she didn’t remove the weight, she’d never be able to breathe freely again. The person Leigh had been trying most to save that day in the courtroom had been herself.

  “Thank you, Miss Merrill. No more questions, Your Honor.”

  OCTOBER 4, 2005

  Burnside, TX

  Jake,

  I came to see you yesterday after I left court, but again they said you wouldn’t come out of your cell. The guard, the surly woman who registers the names of visitors to the jail, didn’t even look up at me when I said who I’d come to see. “He still doesn’t want any visitors,” she said, “but keep trying if it makes you feel better.” Then she laughed, a mean little laugh with no humor in it. At least I made it outside before anyone could see I was crying.

  I keep thinking it has to be some mistake, that you wouldn’t really turn me away if you knew I was here. Maybe no one’s told you I’ve come, even though they’re supposed to. Maybe someone’s messing with us. Maybe you’ve sent me letters, too, lots of letters, but the guards are taking them away after you put them in the mail. Maybe my grandfather is hiding them from me. I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s done plenty to keep us apart all this time.

  I picture you writing me letter after letter, addressing them to me, dropping them in the prison mail, then the guards or my grandfather snatching your letters away and ripping them up, tearing them into tiny little pieces and laughing at you, and at me.

  But I know that can’t be right. If you wanted to see me, you would come to the visitors’ room and talk to me, wouldn’t you? It must be true that you don’t want to see me.

  Maybe there are things about you I didn’t know, but I didn’t think there was anything so earth-shattering that it could change everything between us. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my grandfather was right, and you don’t love me after all, not like I thought. Am I a stupid little girl for still wanting you to come back to me? For loving you, in spite of everything?

  I want to give you a chance to explain. I want to understand why the drugs were in your car that night. You knew it was wrong to dope the horses. You knew it, but you helped your father and Dale, knowing it could be the end of my grandfather’s business and Wolf’s Head.

  We could have lost everything. We still could. Several more of the horses have come up lame, and three have had to be put down. My grandfather’s health has been bad since you were arrested. It’s like he’s lost heart. Uncle Sonny and Aunt Becky try to help, but I don’t know if I can leave him like this. I don’t even know if I want to go. It’s all spoiled for me, Jake. I don’t know how to picture the future anymore without you in it.

  I hope you know I tried to do the right thing yesterday. I thought it would help, but as usual I was wrong. I’ve been wrong about so many things lately. I don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, but I want you to know I tried to tell the truth. I tried, but they didn’t believe me.

  Please write to me. Please forgive me. I don’t know how to go on without you.

  Love,

  Leigh

  OCTOBER 7, 2005

  Burnside County Jail

  Dear Leigh,

  They told me you came by again yesterday. I was in my cell when I heard, reading. Anna Karenina. For weeks now I’ve been reading. In prison you read, or work out, or fight. Sleep won’t come easily, and when it does it’s accompanied by vicious dreams. I’m back in the barn and Dale is coming at me. Sometimes you point the gun at me. Sometimes you pull the trigger. I wake up thinking I’m dead.

  Sometimes I wish I were.

  I was on the part where Anna leaves her husband for Vronsky. Funny that Anna’s brother can have as many affairs as he likes without consequences while Anna loses everything. Maybe Tolstoy doesn’t like Anna much. Maybe he’s wishing bad things on her, trying to make her suffer. Maybe some woman somewhere hurt him once, and this is his revenge.

  I should have told you the truth a long time ago. I could see it in your face in that courtroom, how much I hurt you. I hope you understand. Dale threatened over and over to go to your grandfather if I didn’t go along with them. I knew if my dad lost his job, we’d have to leave, and I might never see you again. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you. Now I wish I’d told, no matter what
might have happened. I’m in here, and you’re on the other side of the wall, and there’s no way in heaven or on earth for us to be together. I’m starting to think it might be a very long time before I get out of here.

  It was my fault. The gun. Everything. If I’d only been able to stand up to my old man.

  I want to say all this to you in person. I don’t want to write it in a letter. I want to see your face when I tell you I’m sorry and ask your forgiveness. I’m so ashamed of myself. If I’d been braver, or smarter, you wouldn’t have been in the barn that night. We’d be together in Boston right now.

  You wouldn’t have looked at me today with stones in your eyes.

  I will hold those stones in my heart. I will hold them until they sink me down. When I come up for air again—if I ever come up for air again—I hope you will have let them go.

  Love,

  —J.

  Seven

  The jury deliberated only six hours before they announced Jake’s fate. Leigh sat in the back of the courtroom watching the proceedings next to her grandfather, who was shaking with anger (or was it relief?) as the foreman read the verdict: guilty of murder. Leigh hadn’t made a sound, just gripped the arms of her chair so tightly that they ached for days afterward. She looked at the back of Jake’s head, willing him to turn around and look at her, or lash out, something. Something other than meek acceptance.

  It wasn’t possible. She whispered, mostly to herself, that there had to be some mistake.

  “You’ll be all right,” the old man had said, leaning over to whisper to Leigh. “You’ll go off to school and get yourself an education, and in a little while all this will be nothing but a bad memory.”

  But instead of arguing with him, instead of telling him he didn’t know her at all if he thought she’d forget about Jake so easily, Leigh had simply sat there and watched the back of Jake’s head as the verdict was read, watched the way his shoulders sagged. The jury didn’t believe it was self-defense, not when Dale Tucker had been unarmed and Jake had probable cause to shoot him over the missing steroids. They’d all miscalculated, and now Jake was going away for a very long time.

  The bailiff came and put the handcuffs on Jake once more. The click of the cold metal around his wrists seemed to release Leigh from the trance she was in, because suddenly she was out of her chair, pushing through the crowd, flinging herself at Jake as if she could shield him with her body.

  “This isn’t happening,” she moaned. “There’s been a mistake, a terrible mistake.”

  Jake had gently pried her hands from around his neck. “Don’t do this, Leigh.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” she whispered in his ear as the bailiffs tried to pull her away. “It will all be like it was before, I swear.”

  “No, it won’t,” he’d told her. His voice was low, choked with so much emotion that Leigh thought her heart would break. “Move on with your life, Leigh. Forget about me. I’m no good for you.”

  She tried to tell him he was wrong, but the bailiffs were already pulling them apart. She saw his back as they led him out a side door of the courtroom, looking very young and scared in his gray suit. He turned and looked back at her once and gave her a shaky smile. Then he was gone.

  That was the last time she’d seen him.

  The man she loved had gone to prison to protect her. For ten years Leigh had tried to live with that knowledge, the knowledge that she was a horribly selfish person, because she had been afraid to tell the truth, because she had known it would cost her Harvard and her dreams of a career. The fact that it cost Jake his dreams hadn’t entered into her mind until it was too late. She didn’t deserve him; she didn’t deserve to be happy.

  She didn’t know it in that moment in the courtroom, but she’d feel that way for a very, very long time. She’d spend years punishing herself for being too gutless to do the right thing sooner than she had, for not speaking up right away the night the sheriff arrived at the barn and saying, It was me. I did it. Arrest me. Prosecute me. Send me to prison.

  It was where she’d felt she belonged, all these years. A lost decade. Harvard, then on to New York and Jenks & Hall—all of it with a heavy dose of self-loathing. The stone of guilt around her neck had become a weight so permanent it left her crippled.

  Now, with Joseph, she had a chance to move on, start again. She’d met someone who didn’t know her past, someone who was giving her a chance at a fresh start. Joseph Middlebury was a good and decent person, worthy of her in every way, and she’d never have to feel guilty with him, never have to spend her life looking backward, making amends. It was a lot to be thankful for.

  Still, there on the boat dock with Jake in front of her—Jake in the flesh for the first time in a decade—she didn’t think of Joseph, or her career, or her life back in New York. She only thought of everything she owed him, everything that had gone unsaid and undone since that night in the barn when he had taken the gun out of her hands and made her promise to keep the truth locked away inside her like a rotten little disease, since that moment in the courtroom when he had told her not to wait for him.

  In the golden light of dusk, as the shadows crept down from the hills and turned the land purple, Leigh could smell the green smell of the river and trees, could hear the music from a nearby restaurant tinkling in the evening air. But all that faded around her as she took in Jake’s expression. He was smiling a little, the edges of his mouth just turning up, but it didn’t reach his narrow blue eyes, which looked straight at her, boring into her with a measure of sadness or apology. Or possibly anger, she thought.

  His face was not as soft as it had been when they were kids—there was a hardness around his mouth and his jaw that hadn’t been there before, the wide planes of his cheekbones more visible under his skin. There were little creases at the corners of his eyes and he seemed taller than she remembered, more muscular. He’d thickened up, like Chloe had said. When she’d seen him last he was still a kid, skinny and awkward, still growing. He’d been jovial and easygoing in his expressions and movements. Now he was a full-grown man—more sure of himself in some ways, more guarded in others—who’d been through things she couldn’t imagine.

  She took a couple of steps toward him, as if she meant to embrace him, but then stopped herself. It wouldn’t be right.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said. “I’m sorry if I scared you, just showing up like that.”

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” she said. “I’m glad I found you. I wanted to see you.”

  “You look good. I like the clothes. Your hair’s gotten so long. New York must agree with you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “You do, too. Look good, I mean.”

  “You’re all pink, though. Haven’t spent much time outside lately, have you?”

  “No, not really. I don’t get much sun in the city.”

  “You should get outside more. Texas always suited you. I remember how tan you used to get swimming at Wolf’s Head.”

  She shook her head and made a little noise, half laugh and half breath, the sound of disbelief. After ten years in prison he thought she should get out more?

  “I read the book, Leigh. The Millikin. It’s great. You should be proud.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I saw the ads for the conference and thought I’d pop in, to . . . well, you know.”

  “I’m glad you did. I wanted to see you. I hadn’t heard you were out until I got here.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Chloe. She said she saw you in town. Are you living in Burnside, then?”

  “I have a little place in town. Just a room really. One of those places to help ex-cons get back on their feet.”

  Leigh shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She’d been hoping neither of them would get around to mentioning Jake’s prison time, but that had probably been wishful thinking. “Oh,” she said. “Is it nice?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “You probably have a great place. A big apartmen
t in the big city with a view of Central Park. And your boyfriend? Joseph, is that his name? Are you living with him now?”

  He said this last so casually that it took a second for her to realize what he was saying. Leigh felt ill, suddenly dizzy and nauseated. Jake knew about Joseph? He’d found out, somehow, when all this time she’d imagined he was totally ignorant of who she was, what she was doing. “How—?”

  “The magic of the Internet. I saw some photos of you two in the newspaper maybe a year ago, at some party or book thing. You were wearing a blue dress. You know that was always my favorite color on you.”

  “That’s right. I’d forgotten.”

  “He’s good-looking. Handsome. His clothes are nice. He works at the publishing company, too?”

  Leigh took a deep breath. The idea that Jake had been googling her from prison had never entered her mind. “Let me explain—”

  Jake stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked out over the water. “No need,” he said. “I told you to live your life, didn’t I? You did. No harm done.”

  No harm done? Really? “Jake,” she said, but then she didn’t know what else to say.

  Still looking away, he asked, “Do you love him?”

  She started to say I do as a matter of course, but then stopped. Were they really going to have this conversation? Jake was practically a stranger to her now. It was none of his business if she loved Joseph or not. He’d given up his claim on her the minute he refused to see her, refused to write her. If he’d wanted Leigh’s love he could have had it long before now, if only he’d reached out and taken it when it was offered.

  Jake shook his head. “Forget I said that. It doesn’t matter if you love him or not. I don’t think either answer would make me feel better.” He laughed a little, as if to himself, and said, “We were over a long time ago. No hard feelings, right?”