Max - Bey Deckard Page 0,54

love. “Because I’m a complete fucking fool.”

14

The Final Blow

November to May

Crane never went to trial—Marc Ouimet wanted swift justice for his stepson’s ordeal, and his deep pockets greased the wheels. They settled instead, and in the end Crane was behind bars after only a week’s time, to begin serving his sentence of one hundred and twelve years, possibility of parole after seventy. It was a light sentence, considering the crimes—had he gone to court and lost, he would have received life—but he would almost certainly die in jail anyway. He’d be over a hundred by the time parole came around.

The first four months were the hardest. He barely left his cell. Thankfully, he didn’t share it with anyone—it was bad enough that mealtimes were stressful, surrounded by so many inmates, 90 percent of whom were unilingual French—he’d probably have lost his mind if he was forced to bunk with someone. Without the alcohol and drugs that he’d grown steadily to rely on with Max, his anxiety was through the roof, and it wasn’t just physical withdrawal—he had nothing to soften the edges of his new existence. Nothing to help him deal with the fact that he’d been fucked, in every sense of the word. His fury had no limits.

However, as much as he convinced himself during the day that he was thankful he’d been broken of his worst addiction, every night he went to sleep missing him.

By the fifth month, he’d settled into a daily routine that still involved mostly keeping to himself, but he’d expanded it to include a bit of television time in one of the rec rooms. It was surprising to him that he hadn’t run into any sort of violence, given what he’d heard about prison life. But, apart from some rather frightening but ultimately harmless male posturing, and a misunderstanding with an inmate over a favourite seat, people seemed to give him a wide berth. Maybe the Charles Manson look was working in his favour. Solitude suited him though. With the poisonous influence of Max purged from his life, he’d reverted back to his old self: studious, forthright, and calm. That meant he spent a lot of quality time counseling himself through the rather odious, yet deeply arousing dreams about Max that plagued him nightly.

He knew it was only a matter of time before he no longer felt like he was suffocating every time he woke up without Max at his side… But time was something he had no shortage of.

When he was nearly through his sixth month of incarceration, Crane suspected there was something highly unusual about the way the other prisoners were treating him. It felt like they were going out of their way to make sure he was unmolested. Three men in particular seemed to shadow him when he moved from one area to another. What could it mean? At first he worried that they were doing what he’d heard wolves did—separate the weakest from the herd—but after another week of watching them from the corner of his eye, Crane saw one of them stop another man from stealing a book from his cell. A few days later, the biggest of the three, a huge man with mottled pink burn scars on his neck and shoulders, standing out bright against his dark skin, subtly positioned himself to shield Crane from a fight that suddenly broke out in the hallway next to him. Afterwards, Crane gave the man a little nod, and the man nodded back. Bewildered, Crane went back to his cell and lay there wondering what they were up to.

Wednesday, May 17th

Staring at the papers in front of him, Crane took a shaky breath.

Across the table in the visitor’s lounge, Brian pulled out a pen. “Sign them.”

Crane looked up at Brian.

“Sign the damn things and get it over with. You owe Mary that much.”

Without a word, Crane took the pen from Brian and methodically signed the divorce papers everywhere they were marked with red flags. When he was done, he laid the pen on top of the papers, but put his hand on it to stop Brian from sliding the stack back towards him. “Just… Tell me how she is,” Crane implored him. “Please? Is she okay?”

“She’ll be better once I get these back to her,” Brian muttered, pulling the pages out of Crane’s grasp. He fixed Crane with a dark look. “I never trusted you, you know. I never thought you were good enough for my little sister… I should