But for almost four years, I’d been telling the same story over and over. To lawyers. To guards. To the
women in my unit. To myself, at night, in my bunk. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.
And nobody believed it.
Now, for the first time, there were pieces of paper, real pieces of paper that other people had found, that said the same thing.
It wasn’t her.
I didn’t hear Opal come down the stairs.
I just felt the other end of the couch sink a little. I looked up. She was sitting there in her pale blue bathrobe, with her hair down.
She didn’t say anything. She just sat with me.
After a while, I wiped my face with my sleeve.
“I used to think being strong meant not crying,” I said.
“Then you thought something foolish,” Opal said.
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. I was crying and laughing at the same time, and it came out as a
sort of snort, which made me laugh harder.
Opal smiled.
Then she opened her arms.
I leaned over, and she held me. The first time we’d ever hugged. She smelled like lavender soap and
coffee. She patted my back slowly, the way you’d pat a child who’d woken up from a bad dream.
“There,” she said quietly. “There now.”
My mother had been dead for eleven years. Nobody had held me like that since.
Two weeks later, Trevor and Monica’s lawyers sent Helen a formal settlement offer.
They’d raised the amount. One hundred and thirty thousand dollars. In exchange, I would give up
certain claims to the house and the company. And I would agree not to take any further legal action against either of them.
