Marva, Shelley’s only friend at work, said Harvey might need a little counseling, and she gave her a name of someone, but Shelley hasn’t had a chance to call yet. She and Marva—everybody calls her Marvy Marva—bonded when they discovered they both had always loved tiny little dolls they could keep in their pockets. Shelley had had a Polly Pocket and one of the newer versions of Liddle Kiddles, one with pink hair, like strawberries, but Marva is older, and so she has one of the original ones, a little cowgirl with white boots and a spotted orange rocking horse. Marva is the kind of person who makes Shelley feel safe, because she’s confident and does that southern thing where she pats your arm and blesses your heart, and Shelley’s heart cannot possibly be blessed enough these days. But what would Marva say if she saw what Shelley wrote that has the judge so upset? Fuck this monster. Send his ass up the river. She would probably chew on those pearls she always wears and then snap her fingers with some words of wisdom that would again lead her to bless Shelley’s heart, which is sometimes a kind way to say you feel sorry for someone or that you think they’re stupid. Bless your heart. She doesn’t say that to Harvey, because she shares his feeling that there is something there—a ghost?—that someone might be watching them. Brent? Someone from her past? That old man? Surely not the old man. She has his address, and Google says he used to be a teacher in college somewhere in the north; he isn’t steady enough on his feet to be that quiet. She is not ready to tell Marva or anyone else, who might think she’s losing it. Not yet. Last night, in the time it took her eyes to adjust and her heart to slow, whatever she thought she saw was gone, surely just a dream, a bad dream because of all the stress.

I made a bad mistake, she will tell the judge, even though you should know that I am capable of holding a lot of words in my head at one time. All she wanted was to get all the language crowding her head out so she wouldn’t be tempted to say any of it. She wants it all behind her and forgotten. She wants to go to work and pretend nothing happened, to pick up a pencil or sit at a keyboard and let the words come tumbling out in a way that finds order on the page.

Call. Please call and give me another chance.