Chapter 17 - Letters from the Deep
Once a year, the United States Bureau of Prisons forwarded an official package to the legal offices of the Sterling Group.
Marcus Cole usually shredded them. But on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in November, he brought one thin envelope to my penthouse office.
“It’s from Pollock Penitentiary,” Marcus said quietly, setting it on the corner of my desk. “You don't have to read it.”
I looked at the cheap manila envelope with the federal inmate stamp across the front.
*Inmate #84920-054: Luke Vance.*
I picked up a silver letter opener, slit the paper, and pulled out the single sheet of yellow, lined legal pad paper inside.
The handwriting was shaky, thin, and desperate:
*Samantha,*
*They have me working in the prison laundry six days a week. My hands are cracked, and the noise never stops. My mother had a stroke at the state correctional facility in Bedford Hills. She can barely speak. Her court-appointed guardian says she won't survive the winter.*
*Every single night when the lights go out on the cell block, I see your face in that ballroom. I see the wine Khloe poured on you. I see the glass on the floor.*
*I would give every breath I have left on this earth just to go back to that freezing Brooklyn apartment. To eat cold soup with you. To hear you laugh when we couldn't pay the electric bill.*
*You were the best thing that ever happened to me, and I was too blind and stupid to see that you were the sun.*
*Please forgive me. Even if you never write back, please just whisper that you forgive me once.*
*—Luke.*
I read the letter slowly, every word.
Then, without hesitation, I held the corner of the paper over the small marble candle burning on my desk.
The flame caught the edge of the yellow paper, turning it black, curling the desperate words into glowing embers.
I dropped the burning letter into the copper wastebasket, watching the gray smoke rise and dissolve into the air conditioning vent.
Forgiveness was something people asked for when they wanted to escape their consequences.
May you like
Luke didn't need my forgiveness. He needed his sentence.
***
