On each Saturday and Sunday, they were allowed visitors. For days afterward, the cellblocks were almost cheery; at least cellblock C-15 was. She’d been in the same cellblock since being sentenced to prison, despite the crime she’d been convicted of. This was the least violent of the murderers’ blocks, as the guards constantly reminded them when there was even the slightest threat to their safety. She did nothing to rattle their chains or that of the others. She spoke only when spoken to and did not participate in cellblock chatter. She had not made friends and did not want to. To what end? To plan a coffee date upon their release, then spend the day shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue? Not going to happen. No way.
Other than her attorney, she rarely had visitors since she had no close family except for her sister, Lara, who was two years younger. Lara had visited all of six times in ten years. Each visit she had asked for money, and Tessa always gave in and would see to it that Jamison Pharmaceuticals released the money her sister had requested. Lara used drugs, and Tessa suspected she worked as a prostitute when her supply of money and drugs was low. They had never been close when they were young since they were raised in separate foster homes after their alcoholic and drug-addicted mother died when they were just eight and ten years old. They’d never known their father, or even if whoever Tessa’s father was had also fathered her sister. They both resembled their mother, and neither had really cared enough to discuss the topic when they were old enough to understand that their mother’s lifestyle wasn’t considered normal.
Tessa remembered feeling relief when she had learned of her mother’s death, and the brief flash of guilt she had felt at her own thoughts. She had been in Mr. Pittenger’s fourth-grade class, studying her spelling words for the week. Mr. Cleveland, their principal, had quietly entered the classroom, whispered into her teacher’s ear, then the two of them looked at her, and she had turned away, knowing that whatever Mr. Cleveland had told Mr. Pittenger wasn’t good because they focused on her.
She had already turned her eyes back to the list of spelling words when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Bracing herself, she stood and followed the two men who’d had such a positive influence on her in the past year. Lara was waiting inside the principal’s office when she entered. Tessa stood next to her younger sister, and reached for her hand, gripping it tightly as they were told of their mother’s death. Both were stoic as they were given the news of their loss. Neither of them cried, accepting the fact that once again, their lives were about to change. Though they had not been told at the time, Tessa and Lara soon learned that the cause of their mother’s death had been a heroin overdose.
The rest of that year was spent in foster care. Hard as their caseworker, Lauren Keller, tried, she was unable to find a family willing to take in both of them, and Tessa and Lara lived apart for the first time in their lives. They’d stayed in contact in the beginning, but after two years, Lara stopped answering the letters Tessa sent her sister through Lauren, and their phone calls were few and far between. Tessa optimistically decided that her younger sister must be happy, and she focused on her own set of problems.
She had been in her third foster home for only three months when Hector and Maria Amaya were arrested and charged with fraud. She never knew exactly what kind of fraud but suspected it had something to do with the “other” business Hector operated in their spare bedroom after he thought she and the three other girls she shared a room with were asleep. People would come and go all night long. Some laughed, some cried, and others were bold and vulgar, their Spanish loud and guttural. Tessa had not slept a full night since she had been placed with them, so when she was told she would be relocating to yet another foster home, she was fine with the decision.
She hated leaving the other girls behind. They were all younger than her and looked up to her. Ashley, a pale, thin girl with long blond hair reaching her waist, appeared to be around nine or ten. Tessa knew something very bad had happened to her family, but when she tried to ask her about it, Ashley would just cry, and Tessa held her hand because she didn’t know what else to do. Deanna was seven and didn’t speak at all. Tessa thought she might have been a bit deaf because she never seemed to react to the loud, boisterous noises at night. Deanna followed Willow, the youngest of the girls, around like a shadow. Willow was small and dark-skinned, with hair so curly it looked like
