For years, Margaret held on to hope. Diane was just scared. Diane would recant. Diane would come visit and explain everything and she’d finally understand. Diane came once. 3 months after the conviction, she sat across from Margaret in the visitation room and told her she was sorry it had to be this way. I didn’t have a choice, Maggie, Diane said. You have to understand that it was you or me. What are you talking about? Margaret asked. What do you mean it was you or me?
But Diane wouldn’t explain. just kept saying she was sorry, that she’d take care of everything, that she’d make sure the house was maintained, that Margaret’s money was safe, that everything would be waiting for her when she got out. “I swear on Mama’s grave,” Diane said. “I’ll make this right. When you get out, you’ll have everything you need to start over.” That was the last time Margaret saw her sister. Diane stopped writing after year three, stopped accepting calls after year five, stopped responding to letters after year 7.
By year 10, Margaret had accepted that she was alone, but she still believed the promise. She still believed that when she got out, her house would be there, her savings would be there, something would be waiting for her. She was such a fool. The prison arranged for a bus ticket back to Grover’s Mill. It was a 3-hour ride from Nashville, most of it through countryside that had changed more than Margaret expected. More strip malls, more housing developments, fewer trees.
She sat in the back of the bus with her plastic bag on her lap, watching Tennessee roll past the window, and trying to remember what her house looked like. The wraparound porch, Robert’s workshop in the back, the oak tree in the front yard that her grandmother planted when she was a girl. She hadn’t told anyone she was coming. There was no one to tell. Robert was dead. Her parents were dead. She didn’t have children. Her friends had long since moved on.
20 years is a long time. And people don’t wait for convicted murderers to come home. There was only Diane. And Margaret didn’t know where Diane was. The bus dropped her off at the gas station on Main Street just after 2:00 in the afternoon. The sun was out now. The morning clouds burned away, and for the first time in 20 years, she felt real warmth on her face. Not the pale sunlight of the prison yard filtered through chain link and razor wire.
Real sunlight, free sunlight. She stood there for a moment, just breathing in and out, feeling the air move through her lungs without anyone watching, without anyone counting, without anyone telling her when to go back inside. Then she started walking. Her house was 2 mi from the center of town. It took her almost an hour to get there. Her knees aren’t what they used to be, and she had to stop twice to rest. But finally, she turned onto Miller Road.
And finally, she saw it. The white farmhouse at the end of the lane, her grandmother’s house, her mother’s house, her house. For a moment, everything was perfect. The oak tree was still there, taller than she remembered. The wraparound porch was still there, freshly painted. The workshop in the back was still standing, and someone had put flower boxes in the windows. Then she got closer, and she saw the minivan in the driveway, and she saw the toys scattered across the front yard, and she saw the woman on the porch, young, maybe 35, pregnant, watching her approach with a confused expression on her face.
