I got over the whole Martha Stewart fantasy real fast. After the first couple of days, I didn’t even try to make friends. I kept to myself, reading, thinking about how I was supposed to be in college at UNC Wilmington this year. Maybe a business major, which seemed totally ridiculous to me now. Business? What did that matter, really? Who could I help with a degree in business? What good could I do for anybody but myself and maybe some blood-sucking company? I tried to keep a journal, but I threw it away after a couple of months because I couldn’t stand rereading what I’d written in the first few days about Ben and how I still loved him even though he betrayed me. How I did something so stupid out of love for him. How I killed people. I took lives. I wrote those words over and over on four or five pages of the journal like some third-grade punishment. I’d touch the latest cut on my lip from Lizard or the bruises that crisscrossed my legs and think these are nothing.
Letitia led me into a room that was the closest thing to freedom I’d seen in a year. It was the room where I’d checked into the prison, but it didn’t look the same to me now that I was facing the windows instead of the door that led to the cells. There was a long counter, a few people working at desks behind it. There were orange plastic chairs along one wall. The windows looked out on a sky so blue I barely noticed the rows of barbed wire at the top of a tall chain-link fence. There was something else out there, too: a crowd on the other side of the fence. News vans. People with microphones. People carrying signs I couldn’t read from inside the room. People yelling words I couldn’t hear, punching the signs in the air. I knew that the crowd was there for me, and they weren’t there to welcome me home.
“Yo, girl,” Letitia said when she saw them. “Sure you don’ wanna stay here wit’ the devil you know?”
Letitia was a mind reader. I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered. There was a kind of protection I had in my cell that I wouldn’t have once I walked through the prison gate.
“You sign over here, Lockwood.” A man behind the counter handed me a sheet of paper. I didn’t bother reading it. Just scribbled my name. My hand jerked all over the place.
I spotted my mother and Uncle Marcus on the sidewalk leading up to the building. Delia Martinez, my tiny but tough lawyer, was with them, along with two guards, helping them push through the crowd. I reached for the doorknob.
“It’s locked, girl,” Letitia said. “They goin’ buzz ’em through. Just hold on.”
I heard the buzzer. One of the guards opened the door, and Mom and Uncle Marcus burst into the room, Delia behind them.
“Mama!” I said, though I’d never called her “mama” before in my life. We crashed into each other’s arms, and then I started crying for real. I held on to her, sobbing, my eyes squinched shut, and I couldn’t let go. I didn’t care who was watching or if anyone thought I was holding on to her for too long. I didn’t care if I seemed nine instead of nineteen. I didn’t care if Mom had had enough—though I could tell she didn’t care about anything either. It felt awesome, knowing that. Knowing she’d hold me as long as I needed to be held.
Uncle Marcus hugged me when Mom and I finally let go of each other. He smelled so good! If anyone had asked me how Uncle Marcus smelled, I would have said I didn’t have a clue. But now that I could breathe in his aftershave or shampoo or whatever it was, I knew I’d been smelling that scent all my life. His hand squeezed my neck through my hair and he whispered in my ear, “I’m so glad you’re coming home, babe,” which started me crying all over again.
“When we go out there, Maggie,” Delia said when I finally let go of Uncle Marcus, “you don’t say a word. Okay? Eyes straight ahead. No matter what you hear. What anybody says. No matter what questions they throw at you. Not a word. Got it?”
“Got it.” I looked over my shoulder at Letitia, and she gave me her weird sneer.
“Don’t ever wanna see you in here again, hear?” she said.
I nodded.
“Okay,” Delia said. “Let’s go.”
The guards led us out, and the moment my feet hit the sidewalk, the people went crazy. I could see some of the signs now: Life for Lockwood. Murderer Maggie.
“Eyes straight ahead,” Delia repeated, her hand on my elbow.
Mom’s car was parked right outside the gate so I wouldn’t have to walk very far through the crowd. Still, when we got close to the car, the camera crews threw microphones toward us on long poles. They shouted so many questions I couldn’t separate one from another, not that I planned to answer any of them. I nearly dived into the car, Mom right behind me. Delia got in front, and Uncle Marcus jumped in the driver’s seat.
People pressed against the car as Uncle Marcus slowly drove through the crowd. The car swayed and shook, and I pictured the mob of people lifting up one side of it and rolling it over, crushing us. I put my head down on my knees and protected it with my arms—the crash position for flying. I felt Mom lean over me, covering me like a blanket.
“All clear,” Uncle Marcus called as we turned onto the road.
I lifted my head and the angry shouts of the crowd faded away. Would they follow us to our dead-end street in North Topsail? Surround our house? Who would protect me then?
I could hear Delia and Uncle Marcus talking quietly, but not what they were saying. After about a mile, we pulled to the side of the road behind a black Audi.
Delia turned around and reached for my hand. “I’m getting out here,” she said. “Call if you need me. You stay tough.”
“Okay,” I whispered, thinking that I wasn’t the tough one in the car. Delia was, and I owed my puny twelve-month sentence to her. She’d gotten a bunch of charges against me dismissed or reduced. I had mandatory counseling ahead of me, where I guess I was supposed to figure out why I did what I did so I never did it again. The fire had been a one-time deal. No question there. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone about the whole frickin’ mess. I wasn’t sure what I needed, but I knew it had to be some kind of total overhaul, not a few sessions with a shrink. Then I had three hundred hours of community service. No college for me for a while. Restitution to the families, but Mom was managing that by taking money out of my inheritance from Daddy. How did you pay families for their dead kids?
You’d think after a year in prison, we’d have a lot to talk about, but it was quiet in the car. Sometimes there’s so much to say that you don’t know where to begin.
I’d seen my mother and Uncle Marcus a couple of times a month while I was in prison. Each time, they sat closer together on their side of the table. I knew Uncle Marcus had loved my mother for a long time and I was glad she’d stopped with the ice-queen routine. They were probably lovers by now, but I didn’t want to go there. It was strange enough that my mother was dating my father’s brother.
“How’s Andy?” I asked. I saw my brother about once a month, enough to know he’d grown at least an inch this year, which only made him about five-one. He was filling out a little more, though. He was swimming with the Special Olympics team in Wilmington now and he had a girlfriend named Kimmie. I hadn’t met her, but I was nervous about anyone who could possibly hurt my brother, who had fetal alcohol syndrome.
“Actually,” Mom said, “he had a stomach bug all night.”
“Oh, no.” I hated to think of him sick.
“I hope