A week later, Angus told me Ryan had recovered enough to be sent back to Rockland. This time I sent a letter and we began to write. We were hesitant at first, reserved in our writings, but slowly we began to open up, getting to know each other again as we shared our daily lives on the inside. He talked a little about things he wanted in the future, like a better job and his own place, but he didn’t really say much about a future with me, like he wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet and was waiting until we were released.
I thought about my own life a lot, whether I wanted to stay in Campbell River—with Ryan, I hoped—or go somewhere else and start fresh, especially now that there was so much media attention to our case. But I still had unfinished business in Campbell River. The story wasn’t over yet. Not for me, anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CAMPBELL RIVER
OCTOBER 2013
Three months later, our cases were overturned and our records expunged. There were a lot of media waiting outside the prison for me, but I refused to answer any of their questions and pushed my way through. Stephanie came to pick me up, with Captain. Turns out she’d decided to foster him after my parole was suspended the first time.
“I had a feeling you would come back and I didn’t want anyone else to have him,” she said.
Captain was ecstatic, jumping over the seat to greet me, his tail whacking both of us, his tongue trying to wash every part of my face. I laughed, then cried into his fur.
We drove to the campsite. The media hadn’t found out yet where I was going to be staying. When I’d been arrested the second time and sent back to Rockland, I’d called Stephanie. She’d gone to the campsite and collected my stuff from the manager. Then, when I found out I was going to be released, she paid him to keep his mouth shut. When I tried to thank her, she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll make you work it off.”
A few days later, I took a walk on the beach with Captain, noticing all the fall leaves that now covered the ground, breathing in the crisp air. When I got back, Ashley was waiting on the front porch.
She looked good, with her hair dyed a more natural dark brown. She was still wearing all black but she’d removed the Goth jewelry and only had a silver chain around her neck.
“Hey, how are you doing?” I said as I stepped onto the porch.
“I’ve been better.”
“I bet.” I sat on the chair across from her and unclipped Captain. He made his way over to her, nudging her legs. She scratched his ears for a minute.
“It’s hard, kind of feels like I lost my mom and my grandpa, like they’re dead or something.”
I nodded, understanding, thinking about my own parents.
“It’s like I don’t even know who they are. My grandpa, it’s weird hearing everything that happened, what he did. I really loved him, you know?”
“Lots of people have two sides. Maybe everything just got out of hand for him and he didn’t know how to stop things once they went that direction. He lost control.” I’d thought about that a lot in prison, trying to correlate the Frank McKinney from my youth with the man who’d slept with my sister and helped cover up her murder, then killed Cathy to keep her from talking. I knew how important his career had been and how much he loved his daughter, but I was still shocked at how far he’d gone to protect everything.
“I guess.” She was quiet for a minute, then said, “In some ways, I understand my mom more now. Like why she married my dad so young, why my grandpa seemed kind of distant with her, why she was always so jealous if he spent time with me.”
“They had a complicated relationship, lots of resentment.”
Ashley nodded. “My dad and I are trying to work things out, or at least we’re talking about stuff more. I missed the first semester of school.… He doesn’t want me to stick around here, listening to all the gossip, so he’s sending me to a private school in January. It has a really strong arts program.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.” She glanced in the direction of Aiden’s trailer. “And I broke up with Aiden. I think my mom was right about him.”
I thought of Margaret. “Sometimes moms are.”
She looked back at me, fiddled with Captain’s collar, straightening it for him. “What about you and Ryan? Do you think you’ll get back together?”
I looked down at the leash in my hand. “A lot happened when we were inside. Prison changes people. It’s hard to get back to who you were before.”
The night after we were released, Ryan’s mother had thrown a party in our honor. It was the first time Ryan and I had seen each other for months and we tried to talk outside in private, but we kept getting interrupted. The moments we were alone felt strange, awkward somehow, like now that we were free to be around each other we didn’t know how to act or what to say. His mother pulled him away to talk to some people, and I left the party early. I hadn’t heard from him since and I wondered if it was too late for us now. We had changed too much.
“But he’s the only other person who sees it the same, right? Who went through almost the exact same thing? I think he still loves you.”
“There’s a lot that has to get sorted out.”