Let Me Call You Sweetheart

72

Skip Reardon had endured what was arguably one of the worst weeks of his life. Seeing the skepticism in Assistant Prosecutor Kerry McGrath’s eyes when she had come to visit him had completed the job that the news about possibly no more appeals had begun.

It was as though a Greek chorus were chanting the words endlessly inside his head: “Twenty more years before even the possibility of parole.” Over and over again. All week, instead of reading or watching television at night, Skip had stared at the framed pictures on the walls of his cell.

Beth and his mother were in most of them. Some of the pictures went back to seventeen years ago, when he was twenty-three years old and had just begun dating Beth. She had just started her first teaching job, and he had just launched Reardon Construction Company.

In these ten years he had been incarcerated, Skip had spent many hours looking at those pictures and wondering how everything had gone so wrong. If he hadn’t met Suzanne that night, by now he and Beth would have been married fourteen or fifteen years. They probably would have two or three kids. What would it be like to have a son or a daughter? he wondered.

He would have built Beth a home they would have planned together-not that crazy, modern, vast figment of an architect’s imagination that Suzanne had demanded and that he had come to detest.

All these years in prison he had been sustained by the knowledge of his innocence, his trust in the American justice system and the belief that someday the nightmare would go away. In his fantasies, the appeals court would agree that Dr. Smith was a liar, and Geoff would come down to the prison and say, “Let’s go, Skip. You’re a free man.”

By prison rules, Skip was allowed two collect phone calls a day. Usually he called both his mother and Beth twice a week. At least one of them came down to see him on Saturday or Sunday.

This week Skip had not phoned either one of them. He had made up his mind. He would not let Beth visit him anymore. She had to get on with her life. She’d be forty her next birthday, he reasoned. She should meet someone else, get married, have kids. She loved children. That was why she had chosen teaching and then counseling as a career.

And there was something else that Skip decided: He wasn’t going to waste any more time designing rooms and houses with the dream that someday he would get to build them. By the time he got out of prison-if he ever did get out-he would be in his sixties. It would be too late to get started again. Besides, there would be no one left to care.

That was why on Saturday morning, when Skip was told his lawyer was phoning him, he took the call with the firm intention of telling Geoff to forget about him as well. He too should get on to other things. The news that Kerry McGrath was coming down to see him as well as his mother and Beth angered him.

“What does McGrath want to do, Geoff?” he asked “Show Mom and Beth exactly why they’re wasting their time trying to get me out of here? Show them how every argument for me is an argument against me? Tell McGrath I don’t need to listen to that again. The court’s done a great job of convincing me.”

“Shut up, Skip,” Geoff’s firm voice snapped. “Kerry’s interest in you and this murder case is causing her a hell of a lot of trouble, including a threat that something could happen to her ten-year-old daughter if she doesn’t pull out.”

“A threat? Who?” Skip looked at the receiver he was holding as though it had suddenly become an alien object. It was impossible to comprehend that Kerry McGrath’s daughter had been threatened because of him.

“Not only who? but why? We’re sure Jimmy Weeks is the ‘who.’ The ‘why’ is that for some reason he’s afraid to have the investigation reopened. Now listen, Kerry wants to go over every inch of this case with you, and with your mother and Beth. She has a bunch of questions for all of you. She also has a lot to tell you about Dr. Smith. I don’t have to remind you what his testimony did to you. We’ll be there for the last visiting period, so plan to be cooperative. This is the best chance we have had of getting you out. It may also be the last.”

Skip heard the click in his ear. A guard took him back to his cell. He sat down on the bunk and buried his face in his hands. He didn’t want to let it happen, but in spite of himself, the flicker of hope that he thought he had successfully extinguished had jumped back to life and now was flaming throughout his being.