He dragged her off, her arms almost being pulled out of their sockets, to isolation. He would teach her a lesson as soon as he could. When Coralee came in for her shift, she complained to the warden about Betsy being there again. She knew what was going on. “He came up behind Betsy, again, and attacked her,” she told the warden. “Then Duke blamed her for it.”

“He said she turned, unprovoked, and threw scalding hot water on him in order to make an escape,” the warden said. He couldn’t look Coralee in the eye.

“You have got to be kidding,” Coralee told him. She was getting more bold in her speech. She figured she’d make a competent lawyer. “You can’t possibly believe that. You know your creepy nephew is obsessed with her.”

The warden sighed. If it wasn’t for his sweet sister, he would have fired Duke long ago. He sighed again. He should have been a grocer. Or a plumber.

Coralee made dang sure that Duke didn’t “visit” Betsy on her shift or on any of the other shifts. No one crossed Coralee, so when Duke tried to sneak down there when Coralee was off shift, he was refused by other guards.

Betsy only had to spend two days in isolation, because the warden intervened. If hot water had truly been thrown, she would have been in there far longer than that.

When she was released she was confused and exhausted, which is what isolation does. Plus, it makes you feel like you’re losing your mind as the walls close in ever closer. When Betsy was headed to the cafeteria a week later, Duke grabbed her and dragged her out to a supply closet and shut the door. He knew that supply closet, and the short hallway on either side of it, didn’t have a camera on it.

He didn’t realize that Betsy would fight as hard as she did, especially after he smacked her so she would obey and shut up. In the end, his testicles were smashed by her raised knee so hard, and with such force, that he fell to the ground. She stumbled out of the closet, her prison shirt ripped. Mrs. Grisham, back from helping with her daughter’s twins—they were so adorable—saw Betsy, her face bruised and swelling, and complained to the warden.

But there was an ol’ boys network in the prison, and the warden was his uncle, so no one did anything to punish Duke, but Mrs. Grisham told him to “stay the hell out of my kitchen, you piece of crap, Duke.”

Betsy cried in her cold, bare cell that night, Eartha’s arm around her. “I’m gonna kill that son of a gun for you, Betsy,” Eartha said.

“Please don’t,” she sobbed. “I don’t want you in here any longer than you need to be.”

* * *