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Epilogue

Dinah

One year later

“Let me know if you see any that look like railroad tracks.” I lean over the table, scanning the sea of puzzle pieces.

“Okay.” Joe doesn’t look up, his focus on a handful of edge pieces that he’s assembling.

I spot one and then another, and add them to my pile, then stand up and stretch my back. “I’m going to grab a coffee. Want one?”

He nods and our eyes meet for a moment, and he gives me a small smile.

My heart soars, and I return the expression.

As I pass his chair, I squeeze his shoulder.

He’s been working out, and I can feel the difference.

I like the changes that two hours a day in the gym brings to my husband.

His arms are more defined, his biceps stretching out the sleeves of his shirt.

His face has thinned out a little, his jaw more defined as a result.

I didn’t think it was possible, but my husband is even hotter than before. Not as tan, true, but still deliciously sexy. I’ve heard the whispers among the staff, seen the lingering looks the female patients give him. Everyone wants him, but I am the only one who has his heart.

Even with everything I did, it’s still mine.

We spent a year apart, in separate jails, awaiting our trials and sentencing.

It was the hardest year of my life, time we passed with letters sent via post office.

It was actually quite romantic, our courtship by mail.

I wrote him a letter every day, in the hour before I went to bed.

He did the same, sending me more than three hundred letters.

I kept every single one of them, storing them in a box that is now under my bed, ready to pull out if I ever need a moment of reassurance.

In that year, in those letters, we healed and strengthened every weak point and break that the prior decade created between us.

By the time we left the jail, we were as strong as iron and ready to tackle the next chapter of our life.

A chapter that, thanks to our unlimited budget for legal fees, will be in comfort.

Our new home doesn’t have the character of our old one, but it allows us to spend every day together, which is what we wanted.

I grab two cups from the rack and smile at the attendant. I fill both our cups with light roast and fix his first, adding a splash of almond milk and one Stevia packet. As I slip a java sleeve on the cup, I watch Joe working, his brow wrinkled in concentration as he hunches over the pieces.

We will spend the next three decades in this facility.

After that, we are up for appeal, though our attorney has made it clear that we shouldn’t count on a release.

That’s fine with me. My biggest fear would be that one of us would be released and not the other.

Together, we can be happy. It’s not the most exciting existence, but we’re finding our own entertainment in the walls of this place.

I stir my coffee and look over the schedule tacked to the mental facility’s bulletin board.

Today is Tuesday, and I find the menu and review the choices.

Chicken alfredo with minestrone soup. I glance at the clock on the wall.

Still two hours before lunch begins. We normally take ours outside on the deck that overlooks the gardens.

I’ll spend the afternoon in those gardens while Joe will hit the gym.

Tonight, we’ll have a light supper, then play Ping-Pong in the rec center before retiring to bed.

We have separate rooms, but we’re used to sleeping in our own beds.

At least we aren’t judged for it here. I pick up his coffee and return to our table, ignoring the wave from a patient whom I pass.

We haven’t made many friends here; Joe and I are unique.

I don’t want to say that we’re better than the rest, but we are here by choice, not necessity.

This place is a carnival of medical conditions, everything from addictions to PTSD to dissociative disorders.

Not the genetic makeup that I want in a new friend group.

I took my family off the approved visitor’s list, and the act was similar to removing an anchor.

I had become too dependent on them, and it took leaving that cocoon to realize how stifling it was.

Now I can breathe. And I don’t miss them.

Especially not Marci. This situation finally gives me the excuse to break off our relationship—an excuse I’ve wanted for twenty-two years.

Finally, no more of her and him. Every time I saw him touch her, beam at her, kiss her .

.. it was a fresh knife stabbing into my heart.

Not that I ever loved him, but for that entire summer when I was away, our baby growing bigger in my stomach, I loved the idea of him.

I envisioned us raising our child together, of going public with our relationship, of having him get down on one knee and beam at me and ask me to be his wife.

Instead, I returned from that summer with stretch marks and a second chin to find his arm around her waist, a hickey on her neck.

When he got her pregnant the summer after her high school graduation, she wasn’t shipped away.

No, instead they married, and my first love became my brother-in-law.

A near-constant reminder of the life that didn’t happen.

The baby who was given away. The betrayal of my sister and the rejection of my crush.

He had taken my virginity by the trash cans outside our house.

That’s where he’d pulled me, when we realized that my dad was asleep on the couch and Marci was up in my bedroom.

He had a few beers tucked in his pockets, and we leaned against the house and I chugged them, desperate for his approval, and when he kissed me, I clung to him, and when he unbuttoned my pants, I let him.

It wasn’t forced or with a stranger, despite what I told Joe in that joint session with Jessica.

It was sloppy and painful, but quick—less than a minute from entrance to exit.

He had grinned at me afterward, as if he’d given me something special.

And he had, we just didn’t realize it then.

He didn’t realize it until twenty-one years later, when it was revealed during the trial.

I didn’t have to share Jessica’s paternity during my testimony, but I did. In part because Marci was in the front row, her hand possessively on his thigh, despite my repeated requests for them not to attend the trial.

It was my parting punch to them, a punch that hit Marci in the gut, her eyes going wide, her face white. She looked like she was going to faint, then vomit, and I recognized that reaction. Now she knew, at least on a small scale, what betrayal felt like.

I confessed the truth of the paternity in that evening’s love letter to Joe. It’s amazing how easy it is to be transparent and honest when you don’t have to deliver the news in person.

His response was kind and forgiving, and I’m sure it helped that he had a day to digest the information before he penned a reaction. That, and the fact that I was already broken in his mind. This confession was just one more crack. One more thing on a future list of items to fix.

My husband loves a project, and while I am no longer supplying him with emotionally damaged and guilty patients to experiment on, he has a newer, better project: his wife.

Oh, he’s being crafty with his therapy. He is nibbling at one piece of trauma at a time, savoring and enjoying that chunk before moving on to the next.

When he exhausts my well of deceit, when I have no other cracked pieces to mend, then I’ll find him a new project. An easy task in a facility for the criminally insane. But for now, I’m keeping him busy, and I love having his full and undivided attention.

I place the coffee in front of my husband and retake my seat.

“Thanks.” He picks up his cup and watches as I do the same. Holding it out, he clinks it to mine. “To the love of my life,” he says. “Forever and always.”

“Forever and always,” I repeat, and meet my husband’s eyes.

Till death do us part.

—Dinah Marino, Patient #423, Walworth Institute, private medical facility