Page 57 of The River Is Waiting

Hi. I’m sorry I’ve been missing your calls. I’ve been wanting to write back since I got your last letter. It’s 4:45 on Sunday afternoon and I finally have some time. My mother’s taken Maisie to a performance ofThe Nutcrackerand after that to supper. My schoolwork is done, I’ve paid some bills, vacuumed the house, and washed the kitchen floor. (Mom’s made two remarks about it being sticky in spots.) The only thing left on my to-do list is getting the oil changed. I’m not even sure those lube places are open on Sunday, let alone after five. Don’t worry. It will get done.

I’m glad you finally got those drawing supplies. I love your idea about the giraffe family. Maisie will, too. I hope you’re still enjoying your outside crew work now that you’re in charge of Solomon. That night he lost it and they made the rest of us leave early? His stepmother,Adrienne, came up to me in the parking lot. She asked if I had a few minutes because she really needed someone to talk to. I just wanted to get home, but after what happened in there, how could I say no? So the two of us sat in my car for half an hour. Boy, did I get an earful! I hope he doesn’t drive you crazy.

Corby, I want to respond to some of the things you wrote in your last letter, but I hear my mother’s car in the driveway. They’re home earlier than expected, so I have to go. I’ll finish this letter after Maisie goes to bed.

Okay, I’m back. Mom said Maisie took a long nap duringThe Nutcracker, so I couldn’t get her to sleep until after nine. Like I said, I need to reply to some of the things you wrote in your last letter, and if I don’t get it done tonight, there’ll be no time to finish it during the week.

First of all, I guess I forgot to tell you that my father and Ana broke up last year. Dad relocated to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. There are a lot of wealthy expats from the US there so he gets plenty of carpentry jobs. He seems happy.

Corby, I’mnotselling the house. Moving back to California with you and Maisie is off the table. Niko’s death would be with us in California, too. So would your record. You can’t just drive away from that either. Sorry to be so blunt, but assuming otherwise is just magical thinking.

You ask how my work with Dr. Patel is going. It’s been worthwhile, but really challenging having to confront the fact that

Sorry, Corby, but I have to get to bed. I probably shouldn’t have poured myself a glass of wine when I sat down to finish this. The next thing I knew, I woke up drooling with my head on the table. Not pretty!

Okay, it’s Monday morning and I’m at school. My class has back-to-back specials—music and gym—so I have about ninety minutes.I usually use this time to correct papers, but I really want to get this letter finished and off to you. The kids’ journals and their quizzes on adding and subtracting fractions will have to wait.

As I started to say, my work with Dr. Patel hasn’t been easy but it’s been helpful. She’s getting me to face a lot of things I might prefer to avoid. Can I find a way to let go of the anger that still lives beneath the grief I feel about losing Niko? Can I forgive you—for Maisie’s sake, and for yours and mine? I don’t know yet. That’s what’s so hard about this whole thing—so freaking confusing. Until the day you did what you did, you were a great dad. Warm and loving, the fun parent. It was obvious how crazy the twins were about their daddy and sometimes I envied that.

I need to be honest with you about something else. After you went to prison, I met with a divorce lawyer. Just one time. I decided to postpone making a decision until after you’re released. Whether or not I eventually pursue it will depend on some of the things I mentioned that I’m working on. And I will need proof of your continuing sobriety. If you start using or drinking again, that will be a dealbreaker. But for now, and for the rest of your incarceration, you and I will stay married.

I want to address something else you said in your letter: that you’ve always needed me more than I’ve needed you. I don’t think in those terms, Corby, but I feel your absence and sometimes it’s painful. You’re not in our bed (snoring), you’re not in the kitchen making breakfast, you’re not picking out something for us to watch on Netflix. Last week, after Maisie went to sleep, I was putting the photo album we’d been looking at back on the shelf when an envelope of loose pictures fell out—photos from that first summer when we started dating. One of those pictures has always been my favorite. We were at the beach near the end of the summer. You were standing at the water’s edge, staring out at the waves. Just as you turned back and saw me, you broke into a beautiful smile and I snapped your picture.

You’ve told me more than once that you knew you loved me and wanted to marry me from that very first summer. If you had said that back then, it might have scared me off because I was falling in love with you, too, and it disoriented me. You were funny and cute and the sex was amazing. I had never felt like this with any other guy. But I was about to go back to the West Coast, so maybe this would just be a summer thing. Then, back at school in the middle of the semester, I opened the door and there you were. You had left school and driven all the way across the country because you needed me. And that was when I knew I needed you, too. Since those pictures from that first summer fell out of the album, I’ve looked at them a bunch. They draw me back to those people we used to be—just kids, really, with no idea how hard and complicated life can get.

With a hug,

Emily

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

November 2018

Days 461–63 of 1,095

Solomon doesn’t join the crew until halfway through my third week on the job. I brace myself, assuming he’s going to be a defiant pain in the ass, but now he seems more sad than hostile. Maybe prison life’s ground him down. November means sweatshirt weather, so I can’t see whether that cut on his arm has left him with a nasty scar or whether he’s carved any fresh ones. I don’t bring it up. It’s like Cavagnero said, I’m only expected to supervise his work, not be his shrink.

On the day Solomon joins us, Lieutenant Cavagnero has us raking leaves. He divvies up the property among us and hands out our rakes and work gloves. Solomon and I are assigned the north lawn, from the main building down to the security fence, probably the easiest job because it means raking a downward slope. I divide our section in two and ask Solomon whether he wants the right side or the left. He shrugs, so I tell him to rake the left side, and that we can take a five-minute break after the first half hour. “That sound all right to you?” He shrugs again.

His raking is slow and haphazard—he’s being passive-aggressive, I guess. He refuses to wear his work gloves, even after I warn him about blisters. The section of lawn he’s raked still has plenty of leaves on it when, after not even ten minutes of work, he throws down his rake and sits on the ground, his legs bent and his head resting against his knees. I’m notsure, but he might be crying. Rather than telling him to get back to work or asking whether he’s okay, I just keep raking. He sits there for several more minutes. Then he stands, picks up his rake, and starts working again.

By the time Lieutenant Cavagnero comes by to check on us, I’m near the bottom of my section and Solomon isn’t halfway down the slope yet. Cavagnero asks me how he’s doing. “Let’s just say he’s a work in progress,” I tell him. “No outbursts yet, so that’s good. Right?” He nods, then reminds me that Solomon and I are a team, so if my teammate’s work isn’t up to par, we’re both accountable. Before I can voice an objection, he climbs the slope and stops to talk to Solomon. Whatever he’s saying to him, Solomon, staring down at the ground, is nodding in agreement.

By eleven or so, despite all the sanctioned and unsanctioned breaks he’s taken, Solomon has managed to rake to the bottom of the hill. “Good job,” I tell him. “But let’s go back up to the top and take one more pass to catch the leaves we missed.” When he protests, I tell him this round will go much faster. “So let’s go.” He stays put on the bottom of the hill while I climb to the top and start raking his side. “Hey!” he calls. “You’re not my boss!” When I don’t answer him, he starts up the hill, rake in hand, and joins me. By the time we’ve made it to the bottom again, the hill looks pretty good. “Gives you a sense of accomplishment, doesn’t it?” I say.

“Not really.”

At lunchtime, my charge sits apart with his back to the rest of us. “Hey, Solomon,” I call over to him. “You want to join us?” He shakes his head. Takes his sandwich out of the bag, pulls it apart, and drops it back in. The only thing I see him eat is his cookie.

“What’s up with him?” Ratchford asks. “He antisocial or something?”

“Solomon likes to keep his own counsel,” I say.

“How old is he?” Harjeet wants to know. I tell him he’s eighteen.

“Ain’t that the kid who shot those dog-pound dogs?” Tito asks. The others wait for my answer, but I just shrug. “Woof woof,” one of them says under his breath. I’m relieved when the conversation shifts to who’d be the better lay: Shakira or Nicki Minaj?

Cavagnero gives us thirty whole minutes to eat, talk, and relax—a luxury compared to the way we get shortchanged in the chow hall. When lunch is over, he hands each of us two clear plastic garbage bags. Our afternoon task is to finish raking our sections and bag the piles of leaves. I think about the time I swiped two of this same kind of bag when I was planning my suicide, and more recently, when Piccardy slashed the water-filled ones to remind me that he had the authority to harass my wife at the metal detector, and if I complained about it, he’d make me regret it. Asshole.

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