The letters came like clockwork, showing up in my mailbox every other week, usually on Thursday or Friday. I always checked the mail after school; I told him this. We’d emailed each other before but that felt so cold, impersonal. I asked for letters instead and he agreed.
I liked seeing his handwriting, the bold slashes across the paper, the smudges of ink that reminded me he was a lefty and he dragged his hand along the words as he wrote. The wrinkled paper that told me he ripped it out of a notebook. The notes in the margins that were silly and reminded me he was still young.
We were both young, though most of the time we didn’t feel like it. We both had to grow up so fast. I believed that’s why we were drawn to each other still. Kindred spirits who suffered at the hands of the same man and all that.
I opened the mailbox and grabbed what was inside, slipping my letter from the pile and shoving it in the pocket of my sweater. Entering our house, I dropped the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter and murmured a hello in greeting to my mother’s call from the family room.
She didn’t push, didn’t ask about my day until later, when we were sitting at the dining room table and she tried her best to work past the stilted conversation our family engaged in now. It was almost painful, having to endure the evening meal at the Watts house.
I hated it. So did Brenna.
Shutting my bedroom door with a resounding click, I turned the lock and then dove onto my bed, reaching for the letter in my pocket. I tore into it with trembling fingers, anticipation filling me at the potential of his words. They could be good. They could be bad. Someday these letters might disappear, and I’ve tried to prepare myself for that. We’d been corresponding for almost a year. He was about the only person I really wanted to talk to. I had no friends at school, not anymore.
Only Will.
I unfolded the letter, chewing on my lower lip as I devoured his words.
Katie,
You keep asking how I’m doing at the group home like you’re worried about me or something. I’ve been trying to avoid that question but I can’t hold back any longer. I hate it here. The guys are assholes. They steal my stuff and I got into a fight last week with one of them. I kicked his ass but he gave me a black eye and I got on restriction for causing the fight. Wasn’t even my fault in the first place. And I’m still out the fifty bucks he stole from me.
At the rate I’m going, I’ll never get ahead, never get anywhere.
Did I tell you I gave up football? Had to let go all my after-school activities so I could find a job. I’m working two, one legit and the other where they pay me under the table. Both suck but at least I’m earning some money. I need to find a new place to hide it all. Maybe I could open up a bank account, I don’t know. I think I need an adult to help me with that, which is such bullshit. I can work and earn my own money but can’t open a savings account?
Enough of my complaining. How are you? How’s school? Did you pass that history test? I bet you did. You studied a lot and you’re always worried about your grades. How’s your dad treating you? In your last letter you mentioned Brenna has been extra nice to you. Is that still the case?
I wish I could see you. Talk to you. The trial has been delayed again. I know you don’t want to talk about him but I’m feeling like the only time I’ll ever get to see you is at trial and that just sucks, Katie.
But I know you can’t meet me anywhere. I know your parents don’t let you out of their sight and that’s the way it should be. They need to keep watch over you and make sure you’re safe.
If I can’t be there, then they have to be the next best thing.
I have to go to work, so I’m sorry I’m cutting this letter short. Just know that I miss you.
Will
I reread the letter, my heart filled with pain at what he was going through. He was so miserable. Working so hard and for what? So someone could steal his money? How fair was that?
But life was totally unfair. I knew that. So did Will. We were the only ones who really got it.
The only ones who really understood each other.
Watching the interview earlier, seeing the old photos of myself, crime scene photos, trial photos . . . all of the memories came back. One after another, so many of them after having been locked up tight in the darkest, farthest corner of my brain, they assailed me. Overwhelmed me. Ultimately, they brought on a massive headache.
I’ve heard plenty of stories about how when people have a traumatic experience, their brain protects them by banishing the memory. A girl I went to elementary school with was hit by a car, thrown fifty feet into the air, and she remembers . . .
Nothing. Not a lick of it.
How I wish my brain had protected me from the traumatic days I experienced by blocking out those awful memories, but it never happened for me. I might have done my best to bury those memories on my own, but they’re always there. Lurking. Just waiting to come back out and revisit me.
Tonight, I thought of him for the first time in . . . forever. And when I refer to him, I’m not thinking of the big, bad, awful, monstrous him.
I’m thinking of the other him. The son. William.
Will.
During the interview, Lisa brought him up first, asking if I’d ever had contact with him after everything that happened. I said no.
I lied.
He reached out to me first, right after everything happened. A handwritten letter in a barely legible scrawl, quick, hard slashes across the lined paper. Words of sorrow and pain, wishes that I was better, hope that I would be okay, and an apology.