Reclaim - Aly Martinez Page 0,75

crazy cat lady sans the cats, time moved on.

Until one day, it stopped.

“You have a call from inmate—”

After twelve years, I didn’t need to listen to the rest of the message. I pulled the phone from my ear and pressed the number one to accept the call. While I waited for the line to connect, I paused the “How to Make Creamy Tuscan Chicken” video on my iPad and dried my hands on my pink-and-white floral apron.

It had been a long day at school, complete with a first-grader sneezing in my face only to turn around and puke on the floor, but hey, at least it hadn’t been the other way around. Thea was losing her mind, struggling with the latest update to her website, Travel For Me. I’d decided to cook her something yummy in my never-ending attempt to take her mind off things. I was a good roommate like that. Plus, I’d really wanted that Tuscan chicken since I’d stumbled across the recipe on my weekly Peeping Tom stroll through Instagram. Win. Win.

“Nora,” Ramsey choked across the line.

I froze, my whole body going on alert. “What’s wrong? What happened? Are you okay?”

There was some movement on his end, and I sucked in a deep breath, ready to face whatever hell the Department of Corrections had thrown his way this time.

“The parole board approved my release,” he whispered as if speaking the words out loud might accidentally change them.

“What?” I gasped. “They approved it?”

This wasn’t our first parole hearing. Ramsey had had one every twenty-four months since he’d become eligible after year six. The Caskeys did everything possible to keep Ramsey locked away. For a family who lived in denial about who their son had been, they sure held a lot of clout in the legal community. With Jonathan being a decorated cop, his dad the former mayor, and the entire Caskey name being something of a Clovert dynasty, they had entirely too many favors to call in.

After Ramsey’s hearing at year ten, we’d had a good cry together during a visitation and decided not to put our hopes into an early release. He hated seeing me crushed each time he was denied, despite being a model inmate. And I hated knowing that, after everything he’d sacrificed, he was still trying to protect me.

We didn’t talk about his parole hearing this time. I didn’t spend months collecting, drafting, and rewriting letters to present to the board with the hopes they’d actually be read. And I didn’t lose myself down a rabbit hole of hope only to end up in a black abyss of depression for days after the decision was made.

We didn’t give up though. Ramsey still put in his paperwork and worked with his attorney. I still prayed to any and every God in existence, but we went into it with real expectations and restrained hope for the very first time.

And somehow, someway, it had finally happened.

“Holy shit, Ramsey. Is this real?”

He let out a loud laugh that cracked at the end. “God, I hope so. I could be out of here in a matter of weeks, Nora. Fuck.”

Weeks.

Over twelve years in a cell and he could be home in a matter of weeks?

My nose stung, and tears burned my eyes. “Wait, is this a done deal? When the Caskeys hear, Jonathan is going to lose his shit. Is there anything he could do to mess this up?”

“I…I don’t think so. They brought me the paperwork and had me sit in on a call with this guy named Lee who’s been assigned as my case agent. He’s supposed to be calling you to check out the house and stuff.” He blew out a ragged breath. “I think this might really be it.” Emotion lodged in his throat, making his words jagged as he forced out, “Please let this be it.”

I ignored the twist of the permanent knife in my heart when it came to Ramsey’s time in prison. There was not a day that passed when I didn’t feel a sense of guilt, but I was no longer drowning in it.

We’d both made choices that day. They were both right and wrong depending on whose eyes you were looking through. I wished every moment of every day that I could change the past, but I couldn’t turn back time. It had taken a lot of years and soul searching for me to get to that place of peace. The pain was still there, but I no longer allowed