The program ends with a close-up video of James back on the day he was found guilty of murder.
“James Bates has been behind bars in a maximum-security prison for two decades. But he will be up for parole in four years, shortly after his forty-third birthday, and legal experts we have consulted believe his chances for release are good.”
James’s face grows bigger as the camera moves in. I can see comb marks in his sandy hair and a tiny shaving cut near his Adam’s apple.
“Bates pled not guilty at his trial, but he never spoke in his own defense. He has never granted a single interview, or apparently even uttered a word about the crime.”
James turns his head slightly. It appears as if he is looking directly at me.
“His attorneys claim he has been a model prisoner. Bates has completed several college-level computer courses while in the Maryland Correctional Center in Baltimore. His attorneys will likely use this as evidence of how Bates is determined to lead a productive life and obtain gainful employment if he is allowed to reintegrate into society.”
James’s gentle, calm eyes are all I can see.
“Bates reportedly spends his free time in prison either in the weight room or using a pencil and scrap paper to draw. Most of his sketches, according to a prison source, look exactly like Ava Morales.”
A shudder racks my body.
James waited for me that night. He has been waiting for me all these years.
I turn off the TV and stand in the void of sudden silence.
Four months ago, almost to this day, the parole board determined that James should be free. I learned about it during one of my library searches.
James wasn’t immediately released, but he will be any minute now.
It’s why I go to the library so often and search for news items about him. I need to know when he’ll get out of jail.
The day when James will come for me is drawing closer.
I try to convince myself otherwise, and sometimes—especially when the sun rises over a fresh day—I almost manage to believe it won’t happen. But in the darkest moments of night, I know the truth.
I didn’t grow up in Virginia like Catherine believes. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she wants to work, is a short drive from my family’s home, from the neighborhood where my father and Timmy still live. It’s close to the restaurant where James worked, and to my old high school.
I might have been able to accept that risk if I was merely weighing it against Catherine’s excitement over her new job.
But Hopkins is less than four miles away from the prison where James is still incarcerated while he fulfils the conditions of parole, including establishing a housing plan and completing certain online courses all prisoners must take once they’ve won parole.
He could walk through the gates at any minute, with his new computer skills and the fury that has been mounting inside him ever since I left him alone to be caught.
What has nearly twenty-five years in a maximum-security prison done to a man who was already enchanted by violence?
It is almost unimaginable.
How far would you go to protect the person you love most in the world?
I have gone to a place so dark and bleak I barely recognize myself. But I know one thing for certain: I did it out of love.
Maybe I made the wrong choice. But I was desperate, and I couldn’t find any other option.
I chose to lie to Catherine when I told her how my mother died many years ago. The real story is that my mother plowed into a tree while driving drunk. The obituary writer implied the accident was a result of her grief over her lost daughter and the questions lingering around my disappearance.
That’s a tidy, tragic narrative, but it isn’t anywhere close to the truth.
Here is my core truth, my reason for moving forward every single day. From the moment I learned I was pregnant, I burned with a purpose every bit as strong as the rage inside James.
I would do anything to protect my child.
Even fake Alzheimer’s disease.
What I did is abhorrent. Unforgivable. There is nothing anyone could say that could make me feel worse than I already do.
But I swear on my life, I did it to save Catherine. If Catherine believes I am sick, I can keep her close. I can keep working to prevent James from learning about her existence, and from coming after her—or at least be there to protect her if he does.
Telling Catherine the truth about my past is not an option. If she learns who her father is, her core sense of self will shatter. She will never be the same.
I’ve thought about this for more hours than I can count. And the conclusion I’ve come to is that this way will be brutal in the short term, but it will serve her best in the long run.
Alzheimer’s is the perfect disguise for me. Unlike cancer or other illnesses I considered, it’s challenging to diagnose.
I hope I won’t need to keep up this charade for long.
I’m counting on the fact that James won’t be able to reintegrate into society. He will either kill again or be killed. Violence is too seductive for him. He can’t stay away from it.
When James is dead or back in prison, I will conjure a story about learning my Alzheimer’s diagnosis was incorrect and say a serious hormone imbalance was to blame for my memory fog. I’ll blame it on a mix-up at the lab, and Catherine and I will celebrate our new lease on life together. If she wants me to get tested to be absolutely certain I don’t carry the familial gene for Alzheimer’s, I will. Of course, the news will be good. I’ll do whatever I can to restore her peace of mind.
I’ll help Catherine reassemble her plans to move to Baltimore or wherever else she wants as quickly as possible, and even though I will miss her as deeply as if a piece of me has been torn away, I will celebrate the fact that she is on the right path.
But I also know, deep in my gut, our future will not be so simple. James is going to look for me as soon as he is released.
When he finds me, he will also find Catherine.
All he will need to do is look into her eyes to know she is his daughter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CATHERINE
It’s time to see if I can catch my mother in another lie.
There’s something about her that has never quite added up, a loose thread I snagged a long time ago and kept tucked in my pocket. She claims to have been raised by strict Catholic parents. It’s why she has a Biblical name—Ruth, with the middle name Mary—and also why her parents threw her out when she got pregnant. Her sin was too great for them to forgive.
But one night when I was about fifteen, my mother and I were flopped on the couch, watching Jeopardy! and shouting out answers. It was storming outside, a bad one. Rain rushed down from the sky and thunder shook our apartment.
I wasn’t scared. I’ve always liked storms. The way the air turns thick and menacing, the static zag of lightning cracking across the sky—Mother Nature sure knows how to throw a tantrum.
When Alex Trebek asked for the source of the quote “Deliver us from evil,” my mouth was too full of warm, buttery popcorn for me to speak. But my mother shouted, “Who is Shakespeare?”
A contestant buzzed in and gave the correct answer a second later. “What is the Lord’s Prayer?”
Shakespeare didn’t write those words, of course. They’re in the Bible.
Not only that, but most Catholics repeat the Lord’s Prayer during weekly mass. Even I knew how important a prayer it was. I’d learned it while watching a Beverly Hills, 90210 rerun, during a scene in which Jennie Garth’s character was trapped in a fire and began reciting it.