Chapter 12 - Letters from Behind Bars
A crisp, yellowed envelope arrived in my post office box on a cold Tuesday morning. The return address was stamped with the identification number of the state women's correctional facility. It was from Carla. I stared at the sealed envelope for a long time, turning it over in my hands while debating whether to throw it straight into the garbage can outside the post office. Every instinct told me to burn it, to pretend it never existed, to keep the toxic remnants of my sister as far away from my peaceful life as humanly possible. Instead, a morbid curiosity won out, and I tossed it into my glove compartment. I didn't open it until I had driven home, picked Lily up from school, helped her settle into her room to do her homework, and ensured she was completely absorbed in her assignments. Only then did I sit down at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and tear open the cheap paper. The letter inside was written in Carla's frantic, messy handwriting. She complained bitterly about the prison conditions, the unpalatable food, the biting cold during recreation hours, and the harsh, unforgiving rules enforced by the correctional guards. She played the victim from start to finish, completely devoid of any remorse for what she had done to a nine-year-old child. “Nobody cares about me here, Naomi,” she wrote, her tone shifting seamlessly from self-pity to desperate, cringeworthy manipulation. “Mom and Dad are broken. You're the only one who has power. If you talk to the district attorney, maybe you can get my sentence reduced to time served. Please. I'm your sister.” I read the words, felt a fleeting, cold wave of detachment wash over me, and then slid the letter straight into the mechanical teeth of the kitchen shredder. There was no sister left to save. There was only a criminal reaping what she had sown.
