Chapter 15 - The Prison Correspondence
Six months after the demolition, while sorting through her mail at her new apartment in downtown Houston, Evelyn received a thick manila envelope bearing the return address of the Polunsky Unit maximum-security prison.
It was postmarked from Death Row.
She carried the envelope over to her kitchen island, sitting down in the quiet sunlight before carefully sliding a letter opener beneath the flap.
Inside was a single sheet of lined prison paper covered in Grant’s frantic, jagged handwriting.
Mom,
I know you’ll probably throw this letter away without reading the first line.
I don't blame you. I deserve to rot in this concrete cage for the rest of my life.
They put me in solitary confinement twenty-three hours a day. The lights never turn off, and the silence is louder than any screaming match we ever had in that house.
I finally understand what Thomas felt down in that sub-basement thirty years ago.
I became the exact monster that Richard raised me to be.
Please... if you ever loved me even a little bit... don't let Maisie forget me.
Tell her I was sorry.
Grant.
Evelyn read the letter twice, her expression remaining completely unchanged.
May you like
She folded the paper neatly, walked over to the kitchen wastebasket, and dropped it inside without a moment of hesitation.
Some apologies come thirty years too late, and some sins can never be absolved by a dying man's tears.
