Unfinished Business. Inglath Cooper
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he lay alone in bed trying to fall asleep. Wondering if he’d ever see her again.
He’d tried to look at the situation objectively. The rational part of his brain told him it was just one of those things. One of those it’ll-never-happen-again, once-in-a-lifetime things. Addy had been hurting. She’d needed someone to make her believe in herself again. Fate had just happened to put him in her path.
As for his own excuse, she’d filled some need in him as well that night. Since his divorce, he’d seen a few women. None, seriously. He wasn’t interested. He’d tried. But the last couple years of his marriage had been like living in a waking nightmare. No matter what he did, the outcome was the same.
Maybe it was the fact that he and Addy had once known everything there was to know about one another. He trusted that knowledge, had let his guard down.
He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the ibuprofen to soften the headache pounding at his temples.
If he had any regrets about that night, they centered around the certainty that the two of them would never get the chance to see if there could have been more.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” he said.
Tracy Whitmire, the receptionist out front, popped in and put his mail on his desk. She had red hair and blue eyes that squinted at him from behind fashionable rectangular-lense glasses. “You going home soon?”
“In a while.”
“Better. That little girl of yours needs to see her daddy.”
From some, Culley might have taken that as a criticism. But Tracy was a single parent herself, and they had shared a conversation or two on the struggle to spend more time with their child during the week.
“I’m headed that way,” he said. “’Night.”
“Good night.” She closed the door behind her.
Culley picked up the mail, sorting out the junk stuff and tossing it in the trash can next to his desk. Near the bottom of the stack a return address caught his eye. Mecklinburg Women’s Correctional Facility.
He dropped the envelope, stared at it for a moment while his stomach did a roller-coaster lurch. He left it there for a minute or more, considered not opening it tonight. But then he wouldn’t sleep until he did.
He picked up the envelope, opened it quickly, pulled out the piece of paper and unfolded it. It was the blue-line kind like school kids used, torn out of a spiral binder, the edges curly. The handwriting was Liz’s, but it no longer had its characteristic boldness. It was spiderweb thin and shaky, as if her hand had trembled a little as she wrote.
Dear Culley,
I hope this letter finds you and Madeline well. Although I can’t exactly say things are good here, I’m in a better place. Have done a lot of thinking, but then what else is there to do?
How is Madeline? She must have grown so much. Does she ever ask about me?
I know I’ve been given more chances than any person deserves, certainly more than you should ever have given me. But I want to do things right this time. I’ve been such a disappointment to you and to myself. And I can barely live with the thought of the awful thing I did.
It looks as if I’m going to be released at 80% of my sentence. It’s hard to believe I only have a few more months to be here. Is there any way you could come for a visit before then? I’d really like to talk to you. I know it’s a lot to ask, and I’ve asked more of you than I ever had any right to. It would mean so much to me, though.
I’ll wait to hear from you.
Liz
Culley sat back in his chair, blew out a heavy sigh and realized he had been holding his breath. There were days when he actually went a stretch of hours without thinking about what had happened three years ago. But most of the time, it loomed in the back of his mind like a dark, dense cloud that cast a permanent shadow.
He glanced at the letter. He wanted to write her back and say he couldn’t come.
But then another part of him felt the same thing he’d felt for her in the last years of their marriage. Pity. And guilt for the fact that he hadn’t been able to help her.
And with those two emotions battling inside him, he left the letter on his desk and went home to see his daughter.
FOR THE NEXT MONTH, Addy did little more than work and sleep, eating if she happened to think about it. Ellen dragged her out a couple of nights, but the single’s scene had about as much appeal to her as an emergency root canal.
She’d actually pulled ahead of Ellen in billable hours this month, the good part being that so much work left hardly any time for mental floggings. Of which she’d given herself plenty.
There had been no more calls from Culley. Which was for the best. And although she felt a bit like a mouse trapped on a wheel, there was enough predictability in her days that she managed to convince herself there was nothing wrong with her life as she was living it.
Predictability was good. But wasn’t it always the case that just when you thought you had the tent pegs nailed down nice and secure, an unexpected wind came along and blew the whole thing out of sight?
One Thursday morning in early May, Addy was at her desk when one of the other attorneys buzzed and said there was a call for her on line three. The switchboard didn’t open until eight, so they took turns picking it up. She stuck a Post-it note on the page of the deposition she’d been skimming and answered with a quick, “Addy Taylor.”
“Addy, this is Oley Guilliams at H.M. Memorial.”
Addy sat back in her chair. Mrs. Guilliams had once been her Sunday school teacher. She hadn’t heard her name in years. “Yes, Mrs. Guilliams. How are you?”
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