They Sent Me To Prison For Her, I Bought A Grave For Me Chapter 03

They Sent Me To Prison For Her, I Bought A Grave For Me Chapter 03

Ephraim’s car pulled up outside my crumbling apartment building.

“Jessa came to Greyfen too,” he said. “I’m picking her up from the airport.”

I ignored him and got out.

When I opened my apartment door, Crispin was sitting on the couch with my jewelry sketchbook in his hands. He stared at its pages as though he had been there for hours.

“You used to live for this,” he said. “Why did you stop designing?”

He looked up at me, then slowly took in the stained walls, the worn furniture, and the single dim lamp in the corner.

His voice came out rough.

“I’m not going to argue about the name right now. Just tell me what happened to you.”

For a moment, I thought his eyes looked red.

I calmly took the sketchbook from him.

“Don’t bother. I’ll never compete with Jessa for another design opportunity.”

I held it against my chest.

“Now will you leave me alone?”

Crispin shot to his feet and seized my shoulders.

“You disappeared for an entire year without a word, and I’m the one hurting you?”

His gaze dropped to my right hand.

“What do you mean you can’t design anymore? What happened to your hand?”

I pulled away from him.

“Stop pretending, Crispin.”

My voice was barely above a whisper.

“A corrections officer called you after they broke it.”

“I heard everything you said.”

The memory still cut as deeply as it had that day.

“Her hand is fractured?” Crispin had said over the phone. “Mirelle has always been too proud. She never misses a chance to flaunt those awards in front of Jessa. Maybe this will teach her some humility. Have the prison doctor check on her later.”

“You heard that?”

His voice dragged me back to the present.

Then his expression changed.

“No. The doctor told me you injured it in an accident.” His eyes searched mine. “What do you mean they broke it?”

“Crispin.”

A soft voice floated in from the doorway.

Jessamine Wexley walked in carrying a stack of documents. She slipped her arm through Crispin’s as though she belonged there.

“I tracked down everyone who dealt with Mirelle at Westmoor,” she said. “They all gave the same account. She twisted her wrist by accident. No one hurt her.”

She held out the papers.

“These are their signed statements. You don’t need to worry.”

The uncertainty in Crispin’s eyes vanished almost instantly.

He turned back to me, his expression guarded.

“So how did you really hurt your hand?”

Of course.

It never mattered how much pain I was in. Jessa only had to tell one lie, and Crispin would choose her version without hesitation.

I put the sketchbook away with steady hands.

“Please leave.”

A phone suddenly appeared inches from my face.

Jessa smiled brightly at the screen.

“Everyone’s been wondering where you went. Say hello, Mirelle.”

More than 100,000 people were watching the livestream.

The numbers blurred before my eyes.

For one terrifying second, I was back in the courtroom with cameras pointed at me from every direction. Thousands of strangers had believed Ephraim’s testimony and condemned me as a drunk driver and a killer.

“Get that away from me!”

I knocked the phone from Jessa’s hand and stumbled backward into the wall.

My chest tightened, and every breath came too fast and too shallow.

Crispin’s face tightened with alarm.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Jessa’s eyes immediately filled with tears.

“You don’t want me here? I’ll leave. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Stop.”

My voice broke.

“Please stop coming after me. Just leave me alone.”

My right hand was ruined. I would never design jewelry again.

I was already dying.

Why had they come back now, only to tear open everything I had barely survived?

“We spent a year looking for you,” Jessa said tearfully. “How can you treat us like this?”

Crispin’s concern disappeared. His expression hardened as he stepped in front of her.

“Jessa has done nothing but worry about you. Is this really how you’re going to treat her?”

He kept talking, but the words dissolved into noise.

I crouched on the floor and covered my head with both arms, shielding myself the way I had learned to do at Westmoor.

“Please,” I begged. “Just let me go.”

The front door slammed.

Silence rushed back into the apartment.

I stayed curled on the floor long after they were gone.

Eventually, I pulled out my phone and sent my landlady a message ending my lease.

Then I booked an appointment to begin the medical aid-in-dying process.

Living had become harder than dying.