His only goal was to survive, though for how long he didn’t know. He hadn’t been sentenced yet, and he was just trying to survive another day, though he wasn’t sure why. He was fine not knowing why, for now. It was instinct. Every living thing fought to stay alive. People. Animals. Plants. Cells. Viruses. Allergens. He felt reduced to his primal self, following his only reflex. Survival.
He inhaled, and the exhaust fumes nauseated him, but he ignored that, too. He kept his head to the glass, which was covered by a wire lattice, and he looked out as they rumbled along the highway. Families in SUVs and minivans passed them, and he could see the kids buckled into their car seats and watching videos, the fathers straight-arming the wheel, and the mothers in the passenger seats, reading Facebook on their phones. He didn’t permit himself to think of Maggie or Caleb. Or Anna. Or even Wreck-It Ralph.
Inmates filled the bus, all hunched over in shackles, sitting nearest the window like he was, spread out to avoid contact with each other. None of them appeared to be first-timers, since nobody was crying or talking. They all knew the unwritten rules, which they made and communicated by actions. Stay in your lane. Mind your own business. Don’t discuss your case with another inmate or they’ll use the information against you or trade it to reduce their own sentence. Above all, find your kind. There was safety in numbers.
Noah knew that would be his immediate problem, since he doubted there were other pediatric allergists at Graterford. He had no group to join. He was a generic white guy, but not a white nationalist. He wasn’t black, Hispanic, or Asian, which were automatic groups. He wasn’t a gang member of any stripe, another automatic group. He wasn’t a Jesus freak or a ‘girlfriend,’ inmate slang nobody needed to spell out. He was on his own, which made him vulnerable.
Noah kept his eye out the window. His bid at Montgomery County Correctional Facility hadn’t prepared him for what lay ahead because MCCF was a minimum-security facility. That was kindergarten compared to Graterford, with its general population of murderers, drug-dealers, arsonists, rapists, burglars, robbers, addicts, schizophrenics, and psychopaths. Graterford would be ‘hard time,’ not ‘smooth time’ like MCCF. And Graterford housed the only Death Row in the state.
The bus crossed the border into Skippack Township, signified by a small green sign, and in time, they turned off of Route 73 onto an unmarked single-lane road that traveled downhill. It led to Graterford, and massive lights made a white halo as bright as a major-league baseball stadium. Noah shifted up in his seat to see the prison, and so did the others, blinking from the sudden brightness after the long, dark drive. He wondered if they were all thinking the same thing.
This is the last time I’ll see it from the outside.
Graterford was a massive conglomeration of buildings, and Noah could see only the lit office complex in front because the entire prison was encircled by a thirty-five-foot high concrete wall, barbed concertina wire, and guard towers with smoked-glass windows.
They traveled to the prison and were hustled out of the bus, shuffling along like a line of hunchbacks because of the shackles. They were ordered into an intake area, where they were unshackled, stripped, showered, and examined, then changed into a reddish-brown shirt with yellow trim and baggy pants with white prison slippers. They were photographed, cuffed up, and given a toilet kit, mattress, blanket, sheets, and towels, then split up by cellblock.
Noah was ordered to go with a burly CO, or corrections officer, in a black uniform with a name tag that read EVESHAM. They walked through dull white cinder-block corridors. The fluorescent lights flickered dully, and the floors were of worn concrete. The overheated air smelled antiseptic and dirty, both at once. The only sounds were the crackling of the walkie-talkie holstered on CO Evesham’s black utility belt and the jingling of his keys. The long hallway ended in a locked sally port, and stenciled letters above it read, CELLBLOCK C.
CO Evesham detached his key ring. ‘Stand back, Dr Alderman,’ he ordered, getting ready to unlock the door.
Noah obeyed.
CO Evesham turned to him, then said under his breath, ‘They’re expecting you.’
Noah blinked, surprised. ‘What do you mean?’
CO Evesham didn’t reply, unlocking the door.
Chapter Sixty-four
Maggie, After
Maggie sat hunched at the kitchen island, her mail spread out and her laptop open to the bank’s website. She was supposed to be paying bills, but the task seemed overwhelming. Everything seemed overwhelming since Anna’s death, and Maggie knew she was stuck in the familiar mire of depression. She felt herself going under, being sucked down, the muck clogging her nostrils and filling her mouth. She wondered if she deserved to die that way, suffocated like Anna.
Maggie’s gaze strayed to the window, and she watched raindrops batter the glass. She couldn’t bear to think that Anna was under the ground, and cold rainy days like this made her regret leaving her there. She had visited Anna’s grave often before the trial, but then reporters had started following her. Now, three days after the guilty verdict against Noah, the media was finally losing interest and only one news van sat parked at her curb. Her neighbors probably hated her, for that and everything else, and she was considering moving, but Caleb didn’t want to.
Maggie had made him her priority since Noah’s arrest, trying to keep the house running as normally as possible, drilling him with his target words, and getting him to his appointments with his speech pathologist, as well as weekly sessions with a child psychologist, to help him cope. He’d wanted to visit Noah in jail, and his therapist thought it would be better if Kathy took him, which was fine with Maggie. She’d kept him home during the trial, with Kathy babysitting the time Maggie had gone to court. He was going back to school next week and was upstairs reading with Wreck-It Ralph.
Maggie missed Anna so badly, feeling the loss of everything her daughter could have been, could have had, and could have grown up to be. She agonized over the fact that not only was Anna dead, but Noah had killed her. Still, sometimes at night, alone in bed, Maggie admitted to herself that there was a tiny part of her that just couldn’t believe Noah had done it. It just didn’t seem like something he could do, despite his conviction and the evidence against him. And he’d said he hadn’t done it, in court. She’d read it in the newspaper. She knew that Caleb had some doubts, too, though his therapist and Kathy thought that was denial.
Maggie didn’t know if she loved Noah anymore. She loved the Noah she used to know, but she didn’t know if he was real or fantasy. She’d been working part-time doing billing for a law firm, and one of the lawyers had helped her prepare divorce papers, which she had yet to file.
Suddenly her phone rang, and the screen lit up with a number from an area code she remembered. Congreve’s. Maggie knew it wasn’t James because she had emailed him about Anna’s death. He had emailed back, saying that he would deal with the trust and the estate, since Anna had been killed before Florian’s will had even been probated. By the terms of Anna’s will, her money went to a variety of charitable causes, which would take months to distribute.
The phone rang again, and Maggie answered it, out of curiosity. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, is this Maggie Ippoliti?’ a woman asked, her voice vaguely familiar.
‘Yes, who’s calling?’
‘This is Ellen Salvich from the Graham Center at Congreve Academy. We met last year. I was Anna’s therapist.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Maggie felt guilty she’d never contacted Ellen. She’d been too embarrassed and ashamed. She hadn’t known how to explain. I’m sorry, but my husband killed my daughter, whom I told you I would take wonderful care of.
‘I just saw in the newspaper, online, what happened –’
‘I’m so sorry, I should have called you.’
‘I was away until recently. I took a leave from school. My father was in hospice in Scottsdale and he passed last week. I’m just now getting back.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Maggie felt an instant kinship with anybody who had lost anybody.