Page 28 of Ghosts Don't Cry

A car passes by outside, headlights sweeping across the wall in a bright arc. I tense, heart rate spiking as I fight against the urge to find cover and disappear before the light finds me.

Prison reflexes. The kind that burrow so deep they become part of your wiring, firing off whether you want them or not.

But it’s not a spotlight searching the yard for inmates out of bounds. It’s not guards making rounds, or inmates looking for trouble. It’s just Saturday night traffic, someone driving home from dinner or a movie or wherever normal people go on weekend nights.

I add blackout curtains to the list.

My hands are shaking again. I press them flat against the desk, feeling the solid wood under my palms.

“What are you planning, Edwards?” The question comes out rough, directed at a dead man who can’t answer … or can he? Is that what the letter I haven’t opened yet says?

I make my way back downstairs, and find it where I left it on the kitchen table. With one jerky motion, I tear it open.

Ronan,

I wonder how long it took before you opened this letter. I hope your stubbornness didn’t keep you from reading it for too long, because I’m sure you have questions, and won’t have asked Mitchell.

I swallow at the accuracy of his words.

So let me answer them here, knowing that wherever you are reading this, you’re somewhere you feel it’s safe for you to focus on my words.

I should have done more. I know I’ve said that before. More than once. But it’s the truth, and a guiltI will live with until my dying day. Of course, if you’re reading this, then that day has come and gone. The irony of that is not lost on me.

You weren’t as invisible as you think you were. I saw you sleeping in the library. I saw how thin you were and how your hands would shake some mornings. I saw how you always wore the same clothes.

I wish I could say it was because I didn’t see it until you were gone, but that would be a lie. I saw everything as it happened, and I did nothing.

My fingers clench, crumping the edges of the paper.

I told myself it wasn’t my place. That if you were in trouble, you would ask for help. For a while I was certain you had a family member who was, at the very least, giving you a bed to sleep in.

There wasn’t. Even Lily couldn’t give me that.

I was wrong. We were all wrong. But by the time I realized how bad things were, you were already gone.

Gone. Such a small word for what happened. For the spiral into desperation that had me reaching for something that landed me in handcuffs.

I should have come to see you sooner. I should have done more than just bring books and talk about history. You rebuilt yourself there. And I’m very proud of being able to see the man you became. But you deserve more than just survival.

This house reminds me of you. It needs work, but it has good bones. So, now it’s yours, along with everything I’ve set up for you.

The comparison makes my throat close up.

Trust me when I say that the conditions I have set are to help you, not to hurt you. It’s not charity, and I haven’t done it out of guilt. I want to give you the opportunity to show small-minded people that you are much more than what they think you are.

This house will give you a chance to build something that’s yours. Take the six months. Fix what’s broken. At the end of it, no matter what you decide, the house is yours. No one can take it away from you.

But just think about things. Maybe not everything needs to stay buried. And sometimes you can make a home in a place you never thought you could.

The last lines punch through every defense I have left. I read the final words over and over.

I believe in you.

Harris.

He first turned up three months into my prison sentence. I sat in silence that first visit, and the second, and the third. But he kept coming back. Week after week, month after month. He brought books. Things to keep my mind busy.

I never understood why he bothered. Why a history teacher would waste his time on a kid who had already proven everyone right about what he’d become. Istilldon’t understand.