Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 136507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
“I’ll arrest anyone who’s mean to them. How about that?” I wink.
Blue eyes the color of forget-me-nots graze over my uniform. “Can you tase them while you’re at it?”
“I may lose my job, but for you, darling daughter, anything.” I smooth my hand over her back affectionately. “And don’t worry. Holt and Annie can handle talk. They’ve been handlin’ it for years.” When your two sons are caught with a truckload of contraband and the bust turns deadly, it’s not something you can escape, and especially not when you’re a Landry.
That family has lived in Cold River since the day the town was born in the early 1900s, settling as farmers in an area known for its glacially deposited rich clay soils. Some say they are Cold River, so one son landing in prison and another in a casket was a shock to the entire community that has never quite settled.
Isla’s attention veers back out the window. Both our houses were built a good distance from the road—a plus for privacy but a pain in the snowy months when Holt literally digs us out with his plow. “Annie seems really excited.”
“She’s been waiting a long time for this day.” There’s no sign of her or the collies on the front porch yet. She probably fell asleep in the La-Z-Boy while watching the driveway.
“She has all his letters in a big box.” Isla emphasizes her words with wide eyes.
“I’ll bet.” I only ever got one letter from Logan. It was short and to the point:
Forget about me. Move on.
A tiny sting pricks my chest, but I shove the feeling aside and scold myself for my fleeting jealousy. If Logan was to keep in touch with any person, of course it should be his mother, the one person who refused to give up on him when everyone else did.
Even his own father wrote him off. As far as Holt was concerned, two sons died that night. He and Logan haven’t communicated much over the years, Holt too busy scrubbing bloodstains out of the Landry name.
But Annie? She wrote letters. Every Sunday, she would sit at her kitchen table with a cup of Earl Grey to jot down a rose-colored update about the goings-on at home, and then she’d drive to the post office on Monday morning to send it out.
The letters went unanswered for years, but Annie never wavered in her determination to keep a lifeline open for her surviving son. Or for herself, perhaps. And then Logan finally wrote back. Since then, they’ve exchanged regular updates about life on the ranch and life in the penitentiary—surely sanitized for a mother’s benefit.
Isla hesitates. “I asked her if she’s worried about, you know, how much prison has changed him.”
Leave it to my teenage daughter to broach the subject the rest of us have been avoiding like an open flame at a gasoline spill. “And?”
“She said she’s praying she’ll get some version of the boy she once knew.” Her brow furrows. “Do you think that’s possible?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” What happens to a person after that many years behind bars? But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish for the same thing, because that boy we all knew?
I was madly in love with him.
We watch the black truck approach the garage, and I wonder about the man it carries. Has Annie been hanging on to an impossible dream?
“I hope she’s not too disappointed,” Isla says through a pensive stare out the window, echoing my thoughts.
“Either way, that ranch is a lot of work, and it sounds like he’s ready to put in the effort.” That’s what Annie told me when she confirmed his statutory release date a few months ago. The Landrys have spent that time preparing the apartment above the garage where his sister Sarah and her husband Jon used to live so Logan can have some semblance of independence as a thirty-eight-year-old man who has spent more than half his life with none.
The truck comes to a stop.
Isla sets her mug down and, collecting my binoculars from the counter, presses them to her eyes to watch the spectacle.
“What on earth are you doing?” I say through a laugh. We’re not that far away.
“I’ve never seen a convict before.” She adjusts the focus on the lenses.
You’ve seen a few, I want to say, but that’s a can I’d rather not open. Besides, I know why she’s so curious. “Why are you so interested in him? Is this because of that picture of Logan on Annie’s mantel?”
She pauses her spying to flash me a grimace. “Ew.”
“What? He was hot. All the girls thought so.” Including your mother.
“Yeah, and now he’s, like, old. And a criminal. He’s an old criminal.”
“Fair enough.” To most sixteen-year-old girls, a man nearing forty may as well be geriatric. “So … how does he look? Besides old.” How has Logan aged, having spent two decades behind bars? Annie last made the trip to visit him six months ago. She said he seemed good—healthy and strong.