Before I can guess what she’s planning, my daughter grabs the envelope off the counter.
“No!” I turn on her, but it’s too late; she’s already sliding a black-painted fingernail under the flap and ripping it open, revealing pale paper inside. I reach out to snatch it away. She steps back, agile and angry.
“Does he write to me, too? To Connor?” she asks me. “Do you get these a lot? You said he never wrote!” I hear the betrayal in her voice, and I hate it.
“Lanny, give me the letter. Please.” I try to sound authoritative and calm, but inside I am drowning in dread.
She focuses on my hands, sweating inside the blue gloves. “Jesus, Mom. He’s already in jail. You don’t have to preserve any damn evidence.”
“Please.”
She drops the torn envelope and unfolds the paper.
“Please don’t,” I whisper, defeated. Sick.
Mel has a schedule. He’ll send two letters that are perfectly, wonderfully the old Mel I married: kind, sweet, funny, thoughtful, concerned. They will show exactly the man he pretended to be, down to the last, loving declaration. He doesn’t protest his innocence, because he knows he can’t do that; the evidence was never in doubt. But he can, and does, write about his feelings for me and the children. His love and care and concern.
Two times out of three.
But this is the third letter.
I see the exact moment when all her illusions are ripped away, when she spots the monster in those carefully inked words. I see her hands tremble, like the needle of a seismograph signaling an earthquake. I see the numb, scared look in her eyes.
And I can’t bear it.
I take the paper from her suddenly unresisting hand, fold it shut, and drop it on the counter. Then I put my arms around her. She’s stiff for a moment, and then she melts against me, face hot against mine, fine little shakes convulsing her body like wild current.
“Shh,” I tell her, and stroke her black hair as if she’s six years old, a child scared of the dark. “Shh, baby. It’s okay.”
She shakes her head, pulls away, and walks to her room. She closes the door.
I look at the folded paper and feel a surge of hate so strong that it nearly tears me apart. How dare you, I think to the man who’s written those words, who’s done that to my child. How dare you, you fucking bastard.
I don’t read what Melvin Royal has written to me. I know what it says, because I’ve read it before. This is the letter where the mask comes off, and he talks about how I’ve disappointed him, taken his children away and poisoned them against him. He describes what he’ll do to me if he ever has a chance. He’s inventive. Descriptive. Repellently direct.
Then, as if he hasn’t threatened to brutally murder me, he switches gears and asks how the kids are doing. Says he loves them. And of course he does, because in his mind, they’re just reflections of himself. Not real people in their own right. If he meets them now, recognizes they’re not the little plastic dolls he loved before . . . they’ll become other. Potential victims, like me.
I put the letter back in the envelope, pick up a pencil, mark the date on it, and put the envelope back in the larger remailing service packaging. I feel better once that’s done, as if I’ve disposed of a bomb. Tomorrow I’ll send the entire package back, marked NO SUCH ADDRESS, and the remailing service will have preexisting instructions to FedEx it to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent in charge of Melvin’s case. So far, the KBI hasn’t been able to figure out how he gets those letters past the prison’s normal screening process. I still hold out hope.
Lanny is wrong about why I put on the gloves. It isn’t to preserve evidence. I wear them for the same reason doctors do: to prevent infection.
Melvin Royal is a contagious, fatal disease.
The rest of the day is deceptively quiet. Connor says nothing about the incident in his bedroom; Lanny says nothing, period. The two of them boot up a video game, and while they’re at it, my time is my own. I make dinner, like a normal mother. We eat in silence.
The next day, Lanny stays locked in her room, since she’s banned from the classroom. I decide not to interfere; I can hear her binge-watching a TV show. Connor’s off to school. It itches at me to have him go alone to the bus stop, and I watch from the window until he climbs on board. It would irritate him beyond measure if I actually walked him there and waited.
When he returns that afternoon on the bus, I step out to greet him but cover it by pretending to poke around in the small flower garden at the front of the house, as if his arrival is completely incidental. He gets off the bus, heavily burdened by his backpack, and two other boys pile off after. The three of them talk, and for a second I worry about bullies, but they seem friendly. The strangers are both blond, one about Connor’s age and one a year or two older. The older one is alarmingly tall and broad, but he gives Connor a friendly wave and grin, and I watch the two of them jog off to take the trail to the left. They certainly don’t belong to the Johansens, who are an older couple with grown kids who’ve visited them exactly once since I’ve been here. No, they must be Officer Graham’s kids. Graham is a uniformed member of the Norton police force. Unlike me, Graham’s family is Old Tennessee; from what I’ve heard, he’s the last of several generations of solid country people who had property here at the lake well before it ever turned into the playground of the wealthy. I still need to drop by, introduce myself, assess the man, and try to start a quiet alliance. I might need law enforcement on my side at some point. I’ve tried a couple of times but gotten no answer at the door. That’s understandable. Cops work odd hours.
“Hey, kid. How was school?” I ask Connor as he trudges past me. I pat the soil I disturbed more firmly back around a spray of blooms.
“Fine,” he says, without enthusiasm. “I’ve got a paper due tomorrow.”
“On what?”
He hitches his backpack into a more comfortable position. “Biology. It’s okay. I’ve got it.”
“Do you want me to read it when you’re done?”
“I’m okay.”
He goes inside, and I stand up to rub the dirt from my palms. I worry about him, of course. Worry about the scare I gave him (and myself) yesterday. Worry about whether or not he needs more counseling. He’s turned into such a quiet, introverted kid, and it scares me as much as Lanny’s outbursts. I don’t know what he’s thinking most of the time, and every once in a while I see a look, a tilt of his head, that reminds me so strongly of his father that I go cold inside, waiting to see that monster look out of his eyes . . . but I’ve never seen it. I don’t believe that evil is inherited.
I can’t.
I make a pizza for dinner, and we’ve all eaten and are watching a movie together when the doorbell rings, followed by a loud, brisk knock. It makes my throat seize up, and I come off the couch in one convulsive leap. Lanny starts to get up, and I urgently motion her back, silently gesturing for her and Connor to go down the hall.
They look at each other.
The knock bangs again, louder. It sounds impatient. I think about the gun in its safe under the couch, but then I slowly ease the curtain back and peek outside.
Police. There is a uniformed officer on our front porch, and the old feeling of anxiety threatens to drown me for a moment. I’m Gina Royal again. I’m back on our old Wichita street, my hands cuffed behind my back, looking at the handiwork of my husband. Listening to myself scream.
Stop, I tell myself, then let the word ring through my body like Javi’s cease-fire command at the gun range.
I disarm the alarm and open the door, not allowing myself to think about what could happen next.
A big, pale policeman is standing there, sharply dressed and creased and polished. He’s a foot taller than I am and broad in the shoulders, and he has that wary, unreadable look I’m so familiar with. Comes standard-issue with badges.