“Thank you,” Leah said as she reached for the glass of Pinot Grigio the waiter handed her, immediately bringing it to her lips.
“Another for you, miss?” he asked, looking at Alexis.
She eyed Leah before she smiled up at him sweetly. “No, thank you, I’m fine.”
“Okay then. Your food will be right out,” he said before he turned and left the table.
Alexis turned, her eyes landing on Leah’s half empty second glass of wine.
“Don’t judge me,” Leah said, placing the glass on the table. “I had a rough week. My classes are out of control.”
“Well, you’re off now. You should just relax. Don’t even grade anything if you don’t have to.”
“I have to finish one more class of essays, but after that I’m not doing a damn thing. I swear, the person who created February break did so to save lives.” Leah twirled the stem of her wine glass as she fought the urge to finish it off.
Alexis laughed as she glanced down at her cell phone, trying to be discreet but failing miserably.
Leah smirked. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
She blushed, realizing she was caught. “I know,” she said, slipping her phone into her purse. “I’m sure he’s fine. You’re right. I just…you know…you think he’d text me if he had a question, right?”
“Yes, I do,” Leah said, trying to stifle a laugh. “He’s fine. They’re fine. Don’t worry.”
Alexis nodded and exhaled heavily as she brought her glass to her lips, perking up as the waiter approached the table with their food.
Leah found it hysterical, the mini panic attacks Alexis had whenever she left the baby with Christopher. In her defense, something always seemed to go wrong while he was watching her, but in her brother’s defense, they were always inconsequential—and hilarious—things. The first time he watched her, he somehow managed to put her diaper on backward. Another time, after the baby had gotten food on the outfit she was wearing, he had changed her clothes, and Alexis came home from the hair salon to find Savanna wearing her very beautiful—and very expensive—christening dress while crawling around outside.
“So,” Leah said, “tell me what you need me to do for the party.”
“I think we’re all set,” she said. “You’re making your spinach artichoke dip, right?”
Leah nodded, and Alexis looked up at the ceiling, running through some invisible list in her mind. “Yeah, so I think we’re good. If you could come a little bit early to help me set up, that would be awesome,” she said, twirling her fork in her pasta. She froze with the bite halfway to her mouth. “Is it supposed to be this crazy planning a one-year-old’s birthday party? I don’t even want to think about her sweet sixteen.”
“Or her wedding,” Leah added with a smile, and Alexis laughed.
“Don’t go there. If we even joke about her dating, Christopher gets all bent out of shape.”
“He’s such a tool,” Leah said, and Alexis laughed around her sip of wine. “I can’t believe she’s a year old already.”
“I know.” Alexis sighed.
The night Savanna had been born was the same night Danny found out he had a sentencing date.
An entire year ago.
It seemed like another lifetime, but at the same time, she could remember it like it was yesterday. In the nine months since Danny had been gone, her sense of time had been stuck in a sort of limbo; sometimes things felt rushed and blurry, and other times they dragged on painfully. Sometimes it seemed like both things were occurring at once.
“Danny can’t get over how much she looks like you,” Leah said, and Alexis smiled.
“How’s he doing, by the way?”
Leah took a tiny breath. “He’s as okay as he can be.” She shrugged, pushing the food around on her plate.
“When do you get to see him again?”
“Saturday,” Leah said.
“Do you like…get quality time with him when you go?” she asked tentatively, as if she were unsure whether to continue on with this line of conversation or change the subject.
“We don’t get conjugal visits, if that’s what you’re asking,” Leah said, trying to lighten the mood. She had gotten good at putting on a mask, displaying the proverbial stiff upper lip. She hated when people worried about her over this, treating her with kid gloves and tiptoeing around topics of conversation. Leah knew they were doing it out of concern, but it only served to make her feel weak, like deep down they knew she couldn’t handle it.
That her fortitude was all just a charade.
She hated it, because sometimes it was true, and she didn’t need the reminder.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Alexis said with a tiny laugh, the curiosity overpowering the hesitancy in her eyes. “I meant, can you really talk? Can you touch him? Or is it…”
She trailed off, and at that moment, Leah wanted to jump across the table and hug her sister-in-law. While it still wasn’t the easiest thing for her to talk about, it was the first time in a long time anyone had really broached the subject with her, inviting her to talk about it rather than trying to distract her from it.
All at once she felt like she might cry from gratitude.
Leah sat up a bit straighter. “Um…we can hug and kiss when I get there, and when I leave,” she said, thinking of how much she looked forward to those simple, chaste actions. “And if the guard on watch is nice, we can hold hands above the table.”
She nodded. “Is that weird for you? Not being able to touch him the way you want to?”
Leah inhaled deeply. “Not really. I mean, I’m kind of used to it now.”
“And you guys are…still okay?” she asked, growing more comfortable with her questions as Leah continued to answer with no signs of breaking down.
Leah nodded. “We’re getting by. It’s just that…” She trailed off, lifting her wine glass quickly and taking a sip to swallow the lump in her throat.
“Do you want to stop talking about this?” Alexis asked gently, and Leah shook her head.
“Actually, no, I don’t,” she said through a tearful smile. “This is good. I know it doesn’t look that way,” she added through a laugh, gesturing at herself as she blinked back tears, “but it’s good.”
Alexis smiled as she reached across the table and squeezed Leah’s hand, and Leah took a breath before she continued.
“I’m always scared, I guess. I’m afraid that I’ll lose him again. That he’ll have a bad day, or a bad week, and decide we’re better off apart. Every visit, every time he calls, every letter—I’m always so excited, but at the same time, a little part of me is terrified of what he might say,” she said, wiping under her eyes with her thumbs. “It just sucks being afraid all the time,” she added before she lifted her glass and finished the wine.
Alexis lifted her hand and gestured for the waiter to bring her another.
“You’re turning into quite the enabler,” Leah said, and Alexis laughed softly.
“But…you don’t feel like he’s pulling away again, do you?”
Leah shook her head. “No. We’ve been doing really well. We’ve got our routine now. And he’s getting really good about talking through his bad days instead of shutting down. It’s just that…until he’s home, a little part of me will always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Alexis nodded. “That’s understandable. But you’re almost halfway there now, right?”
“Well, we’re hoping he’s going to be eligible for good time served. If he is, that means we’ve already passed the halfway mark.”
“Wait, what do you mean? What’s good time served?”
“Basically it’s a sentence reduction for good behavior. He has to serve a minimum of eighty percent of his sentence, but if he reaches that without incident, they can decide to let him out.”
“So then he’d be getting out in…” Alexis pursed her lips, trying to do the math.
“Seven more months.”
“Oh my God, Leah, that’s great!”
Leah nodded. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up. We’ll see.”
Alexis smiled up at the waiter as he brought Leah’s third glass of wine to the table. “So you get to see him every other Saturday?”
“Usually. I switch off with Catherine and Jake, but sometimes I have to go every third Saturday if his mother and sister want to rotate in.”
“Okay, because I’ve been meaning to ask you, I have a few things for him. Some books and magazines. Can I give those to you to bring, or should I send them?”
“Send them,” she said. “They have to pass inspection before he can have them. I’m not allowed to bring anything into the facility when I go.”
“Inspection?” Alexis asked, taking a bite of her pasta. “What, like someone could hide a shiv in a magazine?”
Leah laughed. “No, it’s more for content. They can’t have anything R-rated or pornographic.”
“Oh,” Alexis said with a nod of her head. “Bummer.” Leah smirked as she added, “No porn, though. It’s some stuff your brother picked out. A bunch of automotive magazines. I have no idea if they’re the ones he reads or not.”
“If it’s car stuff, he’ll love it,” Leah said. “Honestly, he’ll pretty much read anything now. My dad sent him some book on US history a few weeks ago and he read it cover to cover. I keep telling him it’s a pity he had to be incarcerated in order to become a good English student.”
Alexis laughed loudly, cupping her hand over her mouth when the people at the next table looked in her direction, and Leah laughed too, feeling momentarily carefree.
“Thank you,” Leah said suddenly, and Alexis’s expression softened as she looked across the table at her.
“You’re welcome.”
They finished their meal, and as they hugged their good-byes in the parking lot of the restaurant, Leah had never felt closer to her.
As soon as she was inside her car, she rummaged through her purse and pulled out her phone before hitting the speed dial for Catherine.
After a few rings, her soft, raspy voice came through the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me,” Leah said as she started the car.
“Hi, sweetheart. How are you doing today?”
“I’m good. About a six today. You?”
“Hmm,” she hummed. “Maybe a five.”
“You should have a few glasses of wine,” Leah suggested. “That’s always good to add a point or two.”
Catherine chuckled.
They spoke on the phone two or three times a week, and early on they’d come up with the number system to let each other know what kind of day they were having. Ten meant they were feeling great, and one was total meltdown.
“What time will you be here on Saturday?” Catherine asked.
“Probably around four or five? Depends on if they’re running things on time over there,” she said, pulling out of her parking space. It had become an unspoken tradition that after visiting Danny on her Saturdays, Leah would stop off at Catherine’s on the way home and have dinner with her.
“Okay. How does eggplant rollantini sound for dinner?”
“Delicious,” she said, “but you know you don’t have to cook for me.”
“Leah, old Italian ladies live to feed people. Don’t take that away from me.”
She laughed as she merged onto the highway. “Okay, you win.”
“Alright sweetheart. I don’t want you to get a ticket for being on the phone with me while you’re driving. Thank you for checking in, and I’ll see you Saturday.”
“Okay. Call me before then if you drop below a five.”
“I will. Bye now.”
“Bye,” Leah said before she cleared the screen, tossing the phone onto her passenger seat.
And then she reached to turn the radio off, allowing the silence to fill the car.
For whatever reason she just felt like thinking today.
She spent so much of her time avoiding it; her life had become heavily rooted in routine over the last few months, and she rarely allowed herself a reprieve from that. Consistency was comforting these days; she needed it like she needed air.
But even the routines that she took solace in were carried out with an air of detachment. It was like when she used to run on the treadmill for conditioning during field hockey season; whenever Leah would look down at the display and realize she still had a ways to go, she would try to separate her mind from her body, pretending it wasn’t her feeling the pain in her legs, the ache in her side, the burning in her throat. And that’s what most of her days were like now: disengaging herself from really feeling anything until the clock on the display ticked down to zero.
Until he was next to her again.
One thing she had going for her was her profession. There was no way she could mope or succumb to any kind of sadness when she had one hundred different personalities in and out of her room all day, with a hundred different questions and a hundred different needs. She had always loved her job, but now she let teaching absolutely consume her. She had to.
Robyn and Holly had been wonderful, of course. Always finding a way to check in or include her, always acting like everything was normal around her, just like she’d asked them to.
But despite all that, Leah knew she was just going through the motions. That every smile and every laugh came with some level of fraudulence. There were little blips of happiness for her, but she knew she wouldn’t feel wholly content with anything in her life until he was home.
And every night, without fail, she cried.
It wasn’t even a conscious thing anymore, and she barely felt anything when she did. Like everything else, it had just become routine for her, like breathing or blinking. She would lie in bed, and as if on cue, the tears would come, trickling down her cheeks without warning, without permission, without feeling, as if she were literally leaking the sadness away.
The sound of her phone ringing on the passenger seat pulled her from her thoughts, and she sighed in relief, deciding she’d had enough thinking for one day. Leah reached to turn the radio back on before she swiped her phone off the passenger seat and brought it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“What the hell did you do to your car this time?”
Leah smiled. “Hey, Jake. And I didn’t do anything, I swear. It just started doing it on its own.”
“Well, I’m in your neck of the woods. You want me to swing by and check it out?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind. I’m not home right now, but I’ll be there in like ten minutes.”
“Alright. Is it doing it right now?”
“Not really. It only does it at high speeds. It’s like this wobbly-shake thing.”
“Wobbly-shake,” he repeated. “Thanks. Your technical terminology will make this much easier for me to figure out.”
“You’re an idiot.”
He laughed loudly before he said, “See you in a few.”
“Bye,” Leah said with a laugh before she ended the call.
By the time she pulled into her development, Jake was parked in the space next to hers, leaning against his bumper with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Hey,” Leah said as she got out of the car, and he walked over to her, giving her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Alright, let’s take it for a spin and see what the hell is going on.”
“Okay,” she said, handing him her keys before she walked around to the passenger door.
Jake started the car and pulled out of the parking space, immediately accelerating through the lot, and her eyes grew wide as she grabbed the handle on the door.
“Jake! Jesus!”
“What?” he said innocently. “You said at high speeds.”
“Yeah, when you’re legally permitted to drive at high speeds!” she scolded, and he laughed just as the car began to shimmy.
“See? That!” she said pointing to the dashboard. “Feel the wobbly-shake?”
“I do,” he said, “although we usually refer to that as having unbalanced tires.”
“I like wobbly-shake better. Can you fix it?”
“Yeah,” he said, slowing down as he made the turn to bring them back to Leah’s. “But not here. You gotta bring it down to the shop. And sooner rather than later. You really shouldn’t be driving around like this.”
“Okay. When do you have openings this week?”
Jake blew a raspberry with his lips. “Are you kidding me? Bring it down whenever you want. We’ll take care of you.”
“Thanks,” she said softly as he pulled into her parking space and cut the engine.
“So…” His expression turned serious as he shifted to face her. “How are you doing?”
Leah shrugged. “I’m okay.”
Jake nodded, looking out the windshield. “And no one’s been bothering you?”
She smiled slowly. “Very smooth, Jake. Like greased ice.”
He turned to look at her. “Greased ice?” he asked, fighting a smile.
Leah lifted one shoulder, laughing to herself.
“Seriously, though. Has he been around? Has he called?”
“No, he hasn’t,” she said. “And I told you I’d let you know if he did.”
Jake nodded. “I know…I just…”
“No, I get it,” she said. “Danny asked you to check in.”
“Asked?” he said with his brow lifted. “No, Danny didn’t ask. He mandated. Even back in the beginning, when he was being a complete douche-nozzle.” He shook his head before his expression turned serious again. “I promised him I’d look out for you, Leah.”
She swallowed, dropping her eyes to her lap. “I know,” she said softly. “Sorry for giving you shit.”
“I like when you give me shit,” he said, reaching over and tugging lightly on the end of her hair. “It means the fire in you ain’t out yet.”
Leah smiled. “Isn’t.”
“Huh?”
“The fire in me isn’t out yet.”
“Yeah, okay. Save it for the classroom, toots.”
Leah laughed, and he winked at her before he opened the door and got out of the car. She met him around the front, reaching to take the keys he offered her. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Call me if you need anything, and bring this down to us as soon as you can,” he said, patting the hood.
“I will,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Thanks, Jake.”
Leah stood there and watched Jake get into his car, waving to him as he pulled out of the parking space before she turned toward her mailbox. As soon as she opened the little door, it felt like her stomach turned inside out. She reached in and pulled out the stack of envelopes, completely disregarding the bills and credit card offers as she shuffled his envelope, the one she’d recognize anywhere, to the top.
Leah jogged up the path to her apartment, fumbling with her keys as she unlocked the door, trying to ignore the little ember of anxiety hidden just behind her eagerness. As soon as she was inside, she tossed the other envelopes on the table, sending a few skidding off the other side and onto the floor as she continued into the living room, opening his letter as she went.
Despite the fact that Danny had access to e-mail, he had told her early on that he preferred handwritten letters. Even though e-mail was much faster, he was only allowed to access the system once a day, whereas a letter was something he could keep with him, something he could read whenever he wanted, as many times as he wanted. In one of his letters to Leah, he had told her he’d reread his favorites so many times, he could practically recite them from memory.
She plopped onto the couch and unfolded the paper, smiling as she saw his familiar angled handwriting.
Leah,
It’s two in the morning, and you’re all I can think about. I wish I could talk to you right now, because I have so much to say, and I’d really rather do it in person, but I know I won’t be able to wait until next week.
Me and Troy were talking today, and he told me what happened with him and his girl. Apparently after his fifth month here, she started missing visitation days left and right, claiming that the drive was too far and that she didn’t have the gas money to come every week. But then a few weeks after that, she started missing his calls too. She’d say she got held up at work, or stuck in traffic, or was helping a friend and couldn’t get to her phone. Troy said he wanted to believe her in the beginning, but I guess over the last sixth months, it’s only gotten worse. He said every now and then he’ll write to her and if he’s lucky, she’ll respond or he’ll get her on the phone. But she’s basically washed her hands of him. And I’m listening to this guy spill his guts, feeling like the biggest piece of shit on the planet, because all I could think about the entire time was how lucky I am. Because she gave up on him, and you never even entertained the idea of giving up on me. Not in the beginning, when my behavior was unpredictable and asinine, not when you found out I was going away, and not even when I was stupid enough to push you away myself. You always fought for me—for us. Always.
I know this hasn’t been easy for you, but no one looking at you would ever know that. You come here week after week with that beautiful smile on your face, walking through security and having your bag searched, sitting through chaperoned visits like it’s the most natural thing in the world. You’ve taken a miserable situation, and you’ve managed to make it bearable somehow, for both of us.
Even in the beginning, when we were struggling to get it right, you never let me doubt anything. Not us, not your feelings for me, not myself. It used to be so hard for me, watching you walk away after a visit and coming back to this. All I’d want was to be with you again, to see you and hear your voice, and then I’d spend the rest of the day wondering if you were missing me as much as I missed you—if you were hurting as much as I was. And I’d hate myself, because it was me who put us in this situation. It’s so easy to get caught up like that in here, to spiral down into the bullshit. But anytime I’d come close to sinking, I’d get your letters, or your pictures, or the books you’d send with the little notes you hide inside for me, and every doubt, every fear, would be gone.
I know it’s not enough to say this, but thank you. Thank you for agreeing to have lunch with me that first day, and for not running from my ridiculous behavior after that. Thank you for allowing me to get to know you, even when I didn’t deserve your patience or understanding. Thank you for trusting me—for giving me your heart and your body and changing me forever in the process. Thank you for dealing with all the trouble that comes with loving somebody like me. Thank you for being brave enough to fight for us when I was too afraid to do it. And above all, thank you for making me feel like myself again. For taking me, flaws and all, and loving me anyway. You have never once let me doubt your feelings for me, and I just want you to know that you are absolutely everything to me. And it’s all I need, just to know that somehow, I managed to do something right in my life by finding you.
I love you more than I could ever express, in writing or in words.
Missing you always,
Danny
Leah read the letter three more times through the blurred vision of her tears before her eyes fell closed, and she folded it carefully and brought it to her lips. She could have sworn she smelled traces of him on the paper, and she inhaled deeply as a tear slipped over her lower lashes and down her cheek.
With a tiny sigh, she opened her eyes and pushed off the couch, making her way back toward her bedroom. She opened the box of his letters she kept next to her bed, placing the new one on top before grabbing the pen and pad off her nightstand.
Leah sat back against the headboard with the pad balanced on her thighs, beginning her letter to him the same way she’d started every one she had written for the past nine months:
Danny,
One day closer to the day you’ll come back to me, and I love you more now than I did yesterday…