wasn’t sure who . . .” She let the sentence die with a
hard swallow. “It wasn’t until you were born that I
knew . . . and so did James. He’d suspected anyway.
Some of those no-good buddies of his had seen me
and Andrew together. But when you were born—”
“Because I was so much darker,” Audra finished.
“I always knew my coloring didn’t fit with the fam-
ily palette.”
“I don’t know why, but James’s suspicions made
me deny it that much more. Insist he was wrong and
you and Petra were full-blood sisters in every way.
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Stay with him even though . . .” She shrugged. “I
don’t know. Maybe I thought that’s what I deserved.
And when he finally walked out on me”—her face
swung toward Audra’s tear-streaked one in the dim
light—“I thought I’d paid my dues.”
“But he’s been gone for years, Ma. You could have
told me any time—”
“No.” Edith shook her head. “No. You were getting
older, smarter. At first we were all dealing with the
aftermath of James’s leaving, and I couldn’t add this
other burden to it. And then you were a teenager, a
teenager always on the verge of rebellion because
you were so different. I could see how you and Petra
needed each other, kept each other from getting into
too much trouble. And I was afraid if I told you I’d
mess that up. And then you were an adult, and . . .”
She sighed again. “I should have told you, but I
couldn’t bear to see that look in your eyes. That
judgment for all the mistakes I’d made”—a fresh
wave of tears misted her eyes—“so I just kept on
denying it and denying it and denying it, even
though every I time I looked at you, he was there
and I’d feel like maybe I wasn’t so”—her voice
cracked—“alone.”
“Ma—”
“I wish I could undo it—I wish all kinds of things,
but I can’t!” her mother cried. “The past is past. If
you have to hate me for the rest of your life, I sup-
pose it’s no less than I deserve but—”
“Ma, I don’t hate you. At least . . . I don’t want to
hate you anymore. I want—” She hesitated, strug-
gling with the words. “I want to understand. I want
to be able to talk to you about this . . . and I want to
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know about him. I want to know what he was like.
Am I like him . . . at all?”
Her mother grimaced. “Audra, I really don’t see
the sense of—”
“Please, Mama,” Audra grabbed her hand. “Am I
like him?”
Edith stared hard into her face, then sighed, her
shoulders collapsing in on each other as though she
were a much older woman. “No, Audra . . . you
looked like him, but you’re not much like him.
But . . . you’re an awful lot like me . . .” Her walnut
brown hand covered Audra’s beige one. “And you
always have been.” She gave a faint smile. “I know
that isn’t what you want to hear, but—”
“No, Mama,” Audra squeezed her mother’s hand.
“It’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
There was just a moment, when the two of them
stared at each other, each rooted to her spot by uncer-
tainty. Audra didn’t know who moved first—and
didn’t care—but in another moment, her arms were
locked around her mother’s body and she felt the
woman’s embrace tight around her back.
“I was going to tell you the night before your sur-
gery,” Edith whispered, clinging tightly to Audra’s
shoulders. “I tried and tried, but I couldn’t get the
words out. And then, you started talking about dy-
ing and loving me and all that. Even after you hung
up, I couldn’t get it out of my mind, so I called back.
Got a busy signal.” She pulled herself out of Audra’s
arms, wiping her face again. “I called and called and
called . . . until finally I dug up that girl Shamiyah’s
number. And I told her ‘I got to tell Audra some-
thing really important about herself and you gotta
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help me.’ I told her, ‘Once she hears what I have to
skin bleaching and come on home.’ ” Edith shook
her head. “She said she’d try to get you a message,
but that the phones were being disconnected in your
apartment there. For a whole week, to help speed
your recovery—”
Disconnected? That didn’t ring true. Not at all . . .
“Phones disconnected?” Audra asked, frowning.
“The phones were never disconnected. At least not
that I know of.”
“Well, that’s what she said. She said she’d try to
get you a message before your surgery, but it might
be too late, since they were going to start the first
procedure so early in the morning.”
“I never even got a message from Shamiyah that
you’d called . . .”
“She wasn’t able to get to you. At least that’s what
she told me.” And when Audra turned toward her
in query, she continued. “She called me back. A cou-
ple of times. To tell me how you were doing after all
that cutting . . . and to give me an idea of when I’d
be able to call you. She kept asking ‘Is this about her
father? Is this about her father?’ until finally I broke
down and told her yeah. That’s when she got all ex-
cited and started talking about how much it would
mean to you, and when she promised not to use it
on the show.” Edith smiled. “She’s a nice girl. Seems
to really like you.”
Audra’s frown deepened. It all sounded right,
sounded logical and feasible enough, and yet, some-
thing nibbled at the back of Audra’s brain like an
unwelcome pest.
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“What is it? What’s the matter?”
Audra shook her suspicions away. “Nothing . . . I
hope.” She pulled herself up from the curb. “I’ve
got to get to work, Ma—”
“Just a minute. I got something else to say,” Edith
announced, giving her face one last treatment with
the smock’s sleeve before facing Audra. “About
Bradshaw—”
Audra sighed. “He’s not talking to me, Ma.”
“Well, what did you expect? He sends his girlfriend
off a thick slab of dark chocolate and she comes back
a ladyfinger!” Edith exclaimed. “That’s enough to un-
settle any man—”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Audra interrupted.
“Yes, you are, Audra. And the two of you are the
only ones who don’t know it. Now, shut up and lis-
ten, Audra, because I’m only going to say this
once.” Edith paused, chewing on her lips as though
what she was about to say hurt her m
ore than any of
the prior confessions.
“You were right,” she said slowly, at last. “He’s
your soul mate.”
Chapter 27
Her mind was spinning with a million thoughts:
Ma, Andrew Neill, Art, Laine, Shamiyah and
the Ugly Duckling show . . .
Fortunately, it was the graveyard shift and she
had the perfect assignment: patrolling the quiet cell-
blocks, making sure inmates were safe and quiet, if
not asleep. Other than double-checking doors and
peering into cells to insure that “lights out” rules
were being strictly complied with, she expected a
quiet-enough night.
Which was a good thing, with the world flipped
upside down.
Her mother confessing to a long-ago passion of
which she was the product; meeting Laine and find-
ing, for the first time, the beauty in her old image,
now that it was nearly impossible to retrieve it for
herself; Art suddenly turning evasive and quiet,
treating her with a courtly arms-length distance
and sudden formality that seemed particularly
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319
strange after all their intimacies. It was as though
she’d gone on the Ugly Duckling show to turn the
tables, but they’d all ganged up and spun the tables
on her.
“You know how to whistle, Audra . . .”
His voice sounded so near, Audra started, peer-
ing down the dimly lit hallway, half expecting to
see his tall, broad form emerge from the shadows.
She thought she heard the echoes of footsteps—
there were several other COs on the floor, pa-
trolling at intervals through the sleeping prison.
Art worked nights from time to time, so it could be
him . . .
But the sound died as she concentrated on trying
to decipher it. Instead, another sound, like a faint
whisper, seemed to taunt her through the rails of a
cell halfway down the hallway.
She moved along the corridor toward the sound,
straining her ears to translate it into words—if in-
deed it was words. It sounded more like the moan of
an inmate in trouble or pain.
She touched her communication device, reporting
quickly the nature of the sounds and her location,
according to procedure.
“Find out which unit it is, then wait for backup,”
came the expected response from the Central Con-
trol. Audra acknowledged, then crept down the hall
toward the sound.
It came to her again, a low moan, a definite sound
of sickness or pain. Audra pulled her flashlight from
her hip belt and peered into cell after cell, looking
for the source of the sound until she saw him, curled
up in a tight ball on his bunk, holding his stomach.
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“Ugghhh . . . ” the man moaned. “Ugghh . . . ”
Audra shined her light along the cell number,
reaching for her walkie-talkie again.
“Officer . . . Officer . . . Marks?” the inmate stut-
tered, breathless with pain. “Oh . . . thank . . . God.
Help me! H—help— ahhhhhh! ”
If she’d thought about it or been focused enough
to be suspicious, she might have wondered how he
knew it was she. But between her own distractions
and the man’s howl of pain, Audra was swept away
by concerns for the man’s well-being.
“What’s the matter?” she shouted into the cell.
“What’s wrong?”
The man let out another low moan . . . and then
fell silent. Audra could hear nothing, not even the
ragged sounds of breath.
“Hey!” Audra shouted, already reaching for the
card key that would open the cell door. “You okay in
there?”
Silence was the only response. Audra hurriedly
slid the card key through a slot on the cell panel, and
punched in her code, wishing that the lights weren’t
on a central system at the other end of the hall. But
still, the door slid open quickly and she stepped in-
side, hurrying toward the room’s single bunk.
“Hey! You okay?” she began, bending toward the
man.
He was on her in an instant, pouncing catlike as he
grabbed her arms, pulling her down on the narrow
bed beneath him. Before she could struggle or cry
out, he’d clamped a sweaty palm over her mouth
and slid her gun out from its holster, pressing it tight
against her temples.
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“Thanks for making this easy, bitch,” he hissed in
her ear. He paused and she felt his fingers groping
her breasts. “You’re half the woman you used to be.”
Haines. Audra knew the voice, even if his face
were barely visible in the low light.
“Yeah, a man might actually like to fuck you now.
And trust me, I will. But first you gonna help me
walk right out of this prison, okay?” He jabbed a
knee into her abdomen, hard enough to take her
breath. “That’s for busting my damn ribs,” he mut-
tered, then raised himself off her, still holding the
gun’s cold metal against the skin covering her skull
and her brain.
Audra lifted herself slowly off the bunk, her
brain racing. Central Control had already dis-
patched other officers, based on her report, but it
was pretty clear that Haines intended to hold them
off, using her as shield. And as if he’d plucked
the thought out of her brain, the man grabbed her,
thrusting her in front of him, his fingers tight
around her neck just as they heard footsteps ap-
proaching.
“Don’t you dare say a word.” He tightened the
grip around her neck. “Not one fucking—”
Audra thrust out an elbow, jabbing the man so
hard in the solar plexus that the gun slipped from
its station against her temple. In the fraction of the
man’s surprise, she bent forward at the waist sud-
denly, working with his headlock to flip him over
her shoulder, like she’d been trained to do in the
inmate restraint workshops and the self-defense
classes that were the cornerstone of a corrections of-
ficer’s training.
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Karyn Langhorne
The maneuver just barely came off before bang!
the report of the gun filled the air, echoing in Au-
dra’s ears in the darkness, followed an instant later
by the sound of metal hitting the hard surface of the
floor. She dropped to her knees, her eyes acclimat-
ing to the darkness, feeling around for the weapon.
Her hand closed around something smooth and
hard .. . just as Haines grabbed her ankle and
yanked, pulling her away from it and tighter into his
wiry arms.
They both heard the footsteps clattering toward
them; they both heard the voices.
“Help!” Audra shrieked, bellowing the words at
the top of h
er lungs as she struggled and kicked—
not only in the hope of freeing herself, but in the
hope of kicking the gun away in the process, mak-
ing it impossible for Haines to retrieve it without re-
leasing her. “Help!”
“Shut up!” Haines hollered, hoisting her to her
feet like she was nothing and shoving her against
the bunk again. With catlike grace, he stooped, feel-
ing the floor in the low light, furtive and deter-
mined, even as the footsteps pounded closer and
Audra heard clearly, “Officer needs assistance!
Shots fired, Block C, Cell 1211! We need the lights!”
She heard a familiar heavy voice growl from the
hallway and then the crackle of response from
Control.
“Bradshaw!” she cried. “Don’t come in! He’s got
my gun!”
She heard the footsteps hesitate, knew they were
right outside the open cell door. Haines was still
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323
feeling along the edge of the bunk, his eyes focused
on the entrance, where Audra could hear the COs
whispering to each other as they took their posi-
tions for containment and rescue.
Crap, Audra had time to think. This is exactly the
kind of incident that gives female COs a bad name—
Then the lights came on, flooding the room with
fluorescent light. Audra blinked, her eyes shifting
painfully with the abrupt adjustment from dark to
light. Then she saw it.
The gun.
Lying between her feet at the foot of the bunk,
tantalizingly close and yet so far away. Haines saw
it, too—it wasn’t two feet from where he knelt, and
an easy sweep of the wrist from being once again in
his hand. Audra heard the music of the great west-
ern classic, High Noon, playing in her ears as
Haines’s eyes locked on hers, his lips curving into
that trademark sneer of his. Then the two of them
made their move: Haines for the gun and Audra for
Haines.
Her right foot connected to his jaw, just as he
stretched out his fingers for the weapon. But her left
foot had already connected to that too, kicking it
like a soccer ball for a goal toward the bars.
“Bradshaw, weapon on the floor!” she shouted.
“Coming to—”
Haines’s fingers went around her throat, squeez-
ing, choking out any further hope of words, let
alone breath. Audra grabbed for his hands, but the
man leaned into the work now, forcing her down,
weakening her with every second that passed until