by Angela Pisel
“Ready to get started?” Kate, the hostess for the day, said while narrowing her eyes in Eva’s direction. She handed Sophie a mimosa and then subtly motioned for her to turn the conversation away from Mindy’s personal life.
Sophie pulled out her laptop and began to go over the first item on her agenda.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Eva interjected immediately. “I hear you’re hiding something from us.”
Sophie pretended to check the wall for the nearest outlet, praying that when she looked up Eva’s fake eyelashes would be batting in someone else’s direction.
“Sophie, I am talking to you.” Eva shrilled the personal-pronoun part of that sentence when Sophie failed to turn around. “We read the newspapers, you know?”
Sophie bent over to plug the cord into her already fully charged computer, her face feeling like it could melt off.
Do they know?
This moment, the one she feared the most, had played out in her mind a million times before. All with varying degrees of who finds out what first and when. How will she ever make them understand?
“For God’s sake, Sophie. What’s wrong with you? You look like you chipped a tooth or something. You should be proud of Thomas,” Eva continued, starting the hand-flipping thing again. “The story was all over the newspapers this morning. Michael called me from his car to see if I’d seen it.”
“Thomas, in the newspaper?” Sophie braced herself against the wall, relieved her sinking sand stayed loyal for another day.
Eva let out an exaggerated sigh. “Your husband is operating on that little girl today. For freeeeee! You know, the one who got her face burned?”
Sophie vaguely remembered hearing the story on the news. Something about a six-year-old tripping over an electric skillet’s cord.
“I had no idea.” Sophie averted Eva’s eye batting and tried to hide the fact that she hated it when Eva knew something about her husband that she didn’t.
“I knew his hands were created to do fine things,” Eva purred. “Don’t you agree?”
The implied familiarity made Sophie uneasy and annoyed. How would she know? Was she a patient of his? Sophie studied Eva’s plump red lips for signs of collagen.
“It’s nice to know you find Thomas’s hands attractive,” Kate butted in with a stiff smile, “but let’s get back to the reason we’re here.”
Eva started to backpedal, but Sophie cut her short. Using her mimosa as a microphone, she said, “Right, the fund-raiser.” She tapped on the rim. “Is this thing on?”
“It may not be on, but it’s sure empty.” Kate grabbed the pitcher and filled Sophie’s glass to the top.
Sophie took a long sip and summoned the version of herself she wanted everyone else to see. After the mimosas started to kick in, she pulled out her three-ring binder filled with to-do lists and due dates and started handing out assignments.
GRACE
Grace Bradshaw, Lakeland State Penitentiary, Death Row. It’s how my mail—mostly legal correspondence from my in-and-out state-appointed attorneys—had been addressed for the past seventeen years. I knew, given my conviction and current occupancy in the ward where prisoners await execution, that this conversation had to happen at some point, but in all the time I’d been here, no one had actually been put to death.
The rumors about the governor must be true. The state was cleaning house, and they were beginning with me. The sound of something clinking together stopped my thoughts. My handcuffs. Ben heard it, too, and reached across the eroded coffee-stained table to stop my hands from shaking. Before he touched me, the officer standing guard snarled out a reminder of the limited-contact rule.
Ben’s voice lowered. “Grace, I will not give up on you.” He glanced over to see if the officer was watching before he put his hand under my chin. I noticed new lines on his forehead that had formed since the last time he’d visited.
“I promise I’ll find a way to help. I took your case because I believed you. Now that I have gotten to know you better, I’m certain you don’t deserve to be here. You aren’t who they say you are.”
Who they say I am. I’d struggled with that sentence from the moment I’d been accused. Munchausen by proxy was how the prosecutor explained my crime. As in one of those crazy mothers from horror movies who purposefully make their children sick for attention and sympathy. A catchy, devastating term that had made for quite the splashy headlines.
The twelve people of the jury sat stone-faced, fixated on every damaging word, while I remained motionless, trying to envision this monster he described. A depressed mother who never wanted a second child, a lonely pastor’s wife so crazed for attention she made her baby sick. His summation—slow and deliberate, calculating but sincere—made William’s death seem like a series of events I plotted for some sick reason.
The man elected by the courts to represent the people never once set foot on my lattice-framed front porch, nor did he care to ask me about the horror of losing a child.
He never witnessed me comfort a crying William in the way only my breast could. Never saw me pace around the family room, gently rocking my baby in my arms, praying he wouldn’t get sick again. He didn’t see me wet a towel to wipe the blood trailing down my daughter’s skinned knee, then remain by her side until “Itsy Bitsy Spider” made her giggle again. I may not have won any awards for parenting, but I loved my children as much as anyone.
The jury bought the prosecutor’s tale of how William became better in the care of others but sick again when I alone cared for him. The man with a different-colored paisley tie for every day of the three-week-long trial convinced twelve jurors of the culpability of one.
Who they say I am. I’d hoped the jury could see me as I was, sift through the fabrications and one misrepresented event. Instead . . . it was worse than I ever let myself imagine beforehand. How could twelve out of twelve people vote to have me killed? That thought still caused me panic.
“Five minutes.” The officer held up his spread hand.
“Grace,” Ben said softly, “I’m still trying to find her.”
“I know you are, but it is hard to find someone who doesn’t want to be found. I think I’m already dead to her.”
“I have someone searching university records, past addresses, things of that sort. Is it possible she might have changed her name?”
I had thought of all these possibilities, a thousand times, and still did not have an answer to give him. I shrugged.
“Promise me you’ll do one thing for me.” I tried to control the shake in my voice. “Give her my journal when I’m gone.”
—
“I’LL ESCORT BRADSHAW,” a familiar pleasant voice whispered to the other officer. I sat in a metal chair with my hands cuffed to a leather belt buckled around my waist. The restraints limited my physical movements, but my thoughts ran all over the place as I tried to process the news I’d received from my attorney.
I looked up into kind green eyes and the face of Officer Jones. “I’m sorry,” Officer Jones said, a crease forming between her brows. “I know that wasn’t the news you were hoping to hear.”
In a more normal situation, like being told I could live twelve to fourteen months if the chemo worked, or finding out my husband of thirty-three years had died in a car accident, I would’ve fallen on her shoulder and sobbed until I had no tears left. I said nothing and gave her a small nod.
I get the feeling that Officer Jones likes me, or at least believes something good lives within me. We’ve never talked about my conviction because she already knew what I’d been accused of. Everyone did. My face, to hear some of the staff talk, used to be on every TV and radio station in the United States and in Canada, until finally the coverage died down and moved on to some serial killer murdering prostitutes in Nevada.
Officer Jones was one of the few female officers who worked on the row long before I arrived.
I assumed she was in her late fifties, based on her seven grandkids, but I never dared to ask her personal questions. Instead, we covered generic carpool topics, like her plans for retirement: “Just twenty-three months and fifteen days until this lady”—she would use both thumbs to point to herself—“is out of here.”
I never thought I’d be the one leaving first.
“This isn’t over yet. The governor can still stop this.” She helped me stand and steady myself, a task that proved harder than I’d thought it would be. My legs wobbled.
The newly elected governor had run on the promise of swift justice. I wasn’t sure it was wise to hope for his help.
I attempted to look on the bright side: Wasn’t there some comfort in knowing the end of my story? A sense of control, perhaps, over writing my own obituary, filling in the exact date that comes after the hyphen. I could ballpark a pretty close time of death and maybe let people know about my state-run, graveside funeral. The problem was I wasn’t sure who would come.
“Come on,” Officer Jones said, “keep your chin up. You’ve never been one to give up on anything. Fight for that daughter you’ve been telling me about. Sophie, right? Fight for Sophie.”
Hearing my daughter’s name spoken in a kind way by someone other than my attorney was more than I could handle. I dropped my head into my shackled hands and began to cry.
I didn’t speak with Officer Jones as she escorted me back. Instead, I did the only thing that calmed me when I couldn’t stand this place anymore. I let my mind go to six-year-old Sophie in high pigtails, front tooth missing and a Christmas-morning smile, handing me a bottle of Sally Hansen’s Hard As Nails purple glitter nail polish. Please, Mommy, can we use this sparkly one?
All the way back to my cell, I painted Sophie’s fingernails one by one, with perfect strokes, blowing each nail between the coats until they were dry and her hands looked perfect.
SOPHIE
She’d just finished lighting the last candle when Thomas walked through the side door leading in from their garage. His phone plastered to his ear, he was still giving the nurses orders: “Up her pain meds to what we discussed. Call me if her temperature is over 100.5.” He blew Sophie a kiss as soon as he saw her.
Eight-forty-five in the evening seemed to be his usual time of arrival rather than the exception these days. Sophie didn’t complain; when Thomas was home he made her feel like she was the only person who mattered in his busy world.
Pad Thai, spring rolls, and steamed vegetables were arranged on coordinating black-and-red-and-yellow-flowered platters, while the take-out containers lurked in the trash can by the garage. She knew he didn’t actually think she cooked all this herself, but she loved to give him that impression.
“Hey, baby.” He kissed her on the cheek, then tossed his keys and cell phone onto the ivory granite countertop. “I’m starving.”
“Hi, handsome. Save any lives today?”
“I improve lives—not save them.” He grinned. It was a standing rhetoric the two had had since they’d started dating a few months after Thomas began his plastic surgery fellowship.
She knew Thomas loved his job. And she loved the way he described his work, even jokingly comparing himself to Frank Lloyd Wright. If his patients—or clients, as he liked to call them—wanted some additions, he could do that. If clients needed some subtractions, he could do that as well. No one was too young and no body too old to deserve a little renovation. Lately, most of his clients—and most of them were women—wanted additions on the upper floor.
Sophie didn’t mind. Breast augmentation paid the bills, financed some pretty elaborate vacations, and allowed her to live in a house that had been featured on more than one regional magazine cover. She could overlook the fact that Thomas had touched more breasts than Hugh Hefner had.
“How was your meeting?” he asked, while he opened a package of soy sauce. “Talk anybody into helping you with the fund-raiser?”
“I did. I have most of the key committee chairs lined up. I still want to give Mindy something to do.” She picked up her spring roll from her plate and peeled back the overly fried top layer. “Did you know she and Stephen were having problems?”
Thomas leaned back in his chair and tossed the empty packet of soy sauce in the trash. “I think I heard Eva say something about it when she was dropping off samples at the office the other day.”
“Eva’s working again?” She didn’t know what to be more shocked about—Stephen and Mindy or Eva’s access to Thomas.
“A couple days a week. The drug company gave her a salary she couldn’t refuse. She’s taking samples around to a few offices in the area.”
Great, Sophie thought. Not only do we have to live in the same neighborhood with Malibu Barbie, but Thomas gets to see her at the office, too.
“Can you hand me a napkin?” he asked, interrupting her jealous thoughts. “I missed you today.” His wide smile reinforced his words.
Most parts of her believed him. The other jagged misfit pieces still felt unworthy and lost, frantically trying to find their way back to where they fit and felt protected. To her once-unbroken place, her existence before her mom killed William and shattered Sophie’s life.
Thomas’s pager went off before dinner was finished.
“It’s the hospital.” He pushed his plate back and looked at the numbers on his pager. “Have a kid not doing so well.”
“The little girl with the scars?”
“You saw the paper?” Thomas paused the twirling of his noodles around the fork.
“I saw Eva.” Sophie leaned over and wiped some sauce off the corner of Thomas’s mouth. “I knew my husband had a soft spot for children hidden somewhere inside there.”
He hated treating kids, and Sophie knew it. Not that he didn’t like children—they were just more challenging and he didn’t like to make them cry. Most of their problems were a result of birth defects, accidents, or because of an incompetent ER doc who couldn’t sew. The parents were usually overprotective and hovering, making Thomas’s job even harder. The child would inevitably squirm, shift on the exam table, and eventually cry before Thomas would have to ask his nurse to hold the kid down.
“I’ll call the hospital from the car. Come with me and you can see Mindy. I think she’s on tonight.”
“I’d love to,” Sophie said as she stuffed down the rest of her spring roll. “May be the only way I can spend time with my popular husband.”
—
THOMAS RAN AHEAD OF SOPHIE DOWN THE LONG, deserted hospital corridor. The phone call from the car hadn’t gone well. Sophie had listened over the speakerphone as Anna, the nurse on two west, said, “Your six-year-old postsurgical graft patient in room two-sixteen, she’s not doing so well, pulse is rapid and irregular, temperature 104.9. Her mother called the nurses’ station because she seemed confused.”
“Okay,” Thomas replied, then paused. Sophie could tell by his silence he was trying to find the reason why the girl had gone south after a routine surgery. Before he could come up with any good explanation, the nurse shouted in the phone, “Dr. Logan, better get here quick; oxygen levels are dropping. She doesn’t look good.”
Sophie followed him as he rushed toward the girl’s room, giving orders to the nurse on his cell phone. His six-foot-three-inch build exuded confidence and commanded respect. Even in a crisis, Thomas remained composed and certain.
Sophie paid attention to the way other women looked at him. The way they followed his instructions without hesitation or doubt. She noticed details like the way his graphite eyes tapered when he concentrated but became almost round when he had something important to say. His steady hands had propelled him to the top during his plastics fellowship, and then to a position at one of the top hospitals in the Southeast. He was as talented as he was good-looking.
Still, Sophie knew things Thomas would never know. Disgusting, never-discu
ssed things, like the wrenching smell of feces and the shape it takes when rubbed on a dingy prison wall. Images a child should be protected from—those were the images that formed the backdrop of Sophie’s last memories of her mom.
Thomas’s Ivy League education had prepared him for many things, but Sophie’s real life had taught her lessons you couldn’t pay to learn. His childhood had consisted of playdates and lacrosse games, while her Saturdays in high school had been spent taking the bus back and forth to visit her mother. She was never sure whether she visited because of obligation or loneliness, but every Saturday, while other teenage girls were trying on prom dresses or squeezing into bikinis at the mall, she boarded the bus, robotically paid her fare, and stayed with her mom as long as prison visiting hours would allow—until one Saturday she didn’t anymore.
Marrying Thomas had given her a fresh start, a clean slate. One that could be written on with the words of a life she was supposed to have, deserved to have. No one, she’d decided, would ever know her shame, or the scandal that had ripped apart a little girl’s fairy tale.
Sophie hadn’t consciously decided to fake her way into a more privileged world. Her fate had happened to her, set in motion the day Thomas walked into the Starbucks where she was working to pay her way through grad school. Her dad’s life insurance had covered college and some of her current classes, but paying for an apartment and food was another thing. Her green employee apron, stained with God knew what, had been what she was wearing when she met her future husband. He would tell her a few months later that it was crazy love at first sight. For Sophie, it was like a dream come true. His dark, wavy hair and pin-striped blue-and-white Ralph Lauren dress shirt, tucked into perfectly pressed khakis, had signaled he was out of her league. She hadn’t dated much, but the guys in her life didn’t come in looking like Thomas or ride out driving the kind of car he did. She couldn’t believe it when he asked her out two weeks and seven lattes later.
Now green aprons, taking orders, and listening to people complain about their coffee were a thing of the past. She was the wife of Dr. Thomas Logan and the daughter of no one.