“Don’t cry for me,” my mother said, her hands cuffed, her voice steady but worn thin. “Just take care of Ethan.”
I was seventeen when the verdict came down.
My father had been found dead in our kitchen. A single stab wound. No sign of forced entry. The weapon—bloody, unmistakable—was discovered beneath my mother’s bed.
There was blood on her robe. Her fingerprints on the handle.
To everyone else, it was simple.
“She did it.”
I didn’t say those words out loud. But I let them live inside me.
That was my guilt.
For six years, my mom—Caroline Hayes—wrote to me from prison.
“I didn’t do it, sweetheart.”
“I would never hurt your father.”
“Please believe me.”
I read every letter.
I never knew how to answer.
Because doubt is quieter than accusation—but it cuts just as deep.
The morning of the execution came too fast.
