“All right,” I reply slowly, unsure of what exactly I’m agreeing to.
“Thank you.” He shifts in his seat like the handcuffs aren’t the only thing restraining him. “Being locked away makes you realise you won’t be around forever, and I don’t want my story to die with me.”
The sound of me swallowing is louder than I would like.
“You don’t sound like a man who is being given a second chance and being released in six weeks,” I say.
“Maybe not. But I’ve been safe in here. Well, as safe as a man can be, locked away with a thousand other criminals. But I’m well aware of the price on my head, angel.”
It’s as if he’s sliced through my cranium and examined my brain, and for the first time since this all began, I wonder just what and who I’m tangling with.
“I’m sure your flock will keep you safe,” I say before I have time to think.
“What is it they say—keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” I wait for him to smile at this little joke, but his mouth remains firmly set, which suggests he isn’t joking at all.
“Five minutes,” the guard says.
I’d forgotten all about the prison guard standing behind me, and his announcement makes me jump as I automatically look to the clock for confirmation.
“I have one question before I leave.” I close the empty notebook and tidy away my scant belongings.
“Go ahead.”
My hand hovers over the Dictaphone. And I’m not sure where the question comes from, but it’s out before I can stop it.
“Do you regret killing him?”
Valdemar’s face hardens as if he isn’t going to dignify my query with an answer.
“Time’s up.” The prison guard appears to my left, and I rise, wondering whether if Valdemar were to answer, it would change anything.
The guard ushers me to the door, and I turn to get one last look at Valdemar, but he’s not alone. My brother has returned, blood spattered on his white shirt, his empty eyes staring right at me as his waxen hand rests on Valdemar’s shoulder.
Blinking to clear my vision, I try to erase the blood, the bullet hole, and the look of sorrow on his face, but Ed isn’t some hallucination to be tampered with. My brother remains as Valdemar answers me.
“There’s a famous saying by a man named Sydney J. Harris,” he begins, his eyes narrowing. “‘Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.’”
CHAPTER SIX
It’s beentwo days since I was last at the prison, yet it feels like longer. Valdemar’s parting words have stewed in my brain, bubbled with possibilities, and boiled over into an unhealthy obsession with what he could have meant by them.
“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”
Seeing Ed standing behind Valdemar, his pale hand with its raven tattoo resting on Valdemar’s shoulder, how he looked so haunted even though he’s the one who is dead, has kept me awake every single night.
After the visit, I’d stormed out of the room and marched back to the ferry, my anger at Valdemar coiled into a spitting viper that I would have loved to have unleashed on him.
Blue Raincoat Guy hadn’t been on the return ferry, and I was glad I didn’t have to make idle chitchat about my first meeting with the notorious madman Montresor, because I would have only spat poison. But I’ve found it hard not having anyone to talk to. My one-way conversations with my mother are a sounding board only.
“I’m not going back there,” I’d told her on Wednesday morning as I’d made coffee. But as I’d gone back into mybedroom, a frame had been placed on my bed, the first school photo taken of Ed and me together, our uniforms crisp and stiff, my hair braided tightly in pigtails, Ed’s silver hair slicked to the side with glossy gel, our smiles as fake as the skylike background behind us. I’ve never seen my mother move things, never seen her touch objects, but somehow, she manages to make them appear as if by magic, her way of silently telling me what I need to do.
When I got up this morning, my mother had been waiting for me in the kitchen, a knowing look on her face over the fact that today I was due to visit Valdemar.
So, I’m back at the prison, and after a long wait, I’m now being patted down by a different prison guard to the one who searched me on Tuesday, her hands just as ruthless as the last one’s had been. Blue Raincoat Guy isn’t here. Instead, I’m surrounded by a handful of haunted-looking friends and family who’ve made the dismal ferry ride over to see their criminals without the bars—like petting time at a human zoo.
It’s an eclectic mix of people. A young man with a fresh crop of acne is accompanied by an older man with a receding hairline and a beer belly that doesn’t want to be restrained under his zipped-up jacket. Then there’s a middle-aged lady who looks like she used to be tall but has shrunk, possibly worn down by these visits. And then there’s a young woman with jet-black hair, unnaturally long acrylic nails, and glossy lips. She was chewing gum when we arrived, and the guards immediately asked her to get rid of it. She seemed to take great pleasure in spitting it out into the plastic bin they held up for her. Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t look afraid. She looks like she wants to be here, like it’s part of her weekly routine along with sunbeds and a pedicure.
And then there’s me. I’ve dressed in skinny jeans and black Converse, not wanting to stand out as a reporter. I wonder whatthe rest of the people must be thinking when they look at me, wondering which criminal I’ve been coerced into visiting.
