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drinking since he was fourteen, and doing drugs at least that long. As a teenager, he was kicked out of every private school in Connecticut. Then he flunked out of Brown in his first year, and headed south to join me in Florida, where he enrolled in night school at the University of Miami, and where he’s been languishing ever since, taking one aimless course after another, rarely even bothering to write the final exams. He lives in a furnished apartment in a nasty part of town, works as little as possible, and only then when he needs to supplement the small inheritance our paternal grandmother left us, and which our beloved father, as trustee of her estate, elected to dole out in meager monthly increments. “Probably one of the few smart decisions he ever made,” she muttered out loud.
    “Sorry?” Glen asked.
    “Smart decision, to have coffee,” Charley amended, wondering if she was fooling him. If she was fooling anyone.
    “Anytime.” The phone rang. Glen pushed himself off the sofa and walked to his desk in three easy strides. “McLaren here,” he said into the receiver. “Well, how are you ?” he asked, his voice dropping, becoming instantly soft and seductive. He held one hand over the mouthpiece, whispered to Charley, “I’ll just be a minute.”
    “Would you like me to leave?”
    He shook his head. “Not necessary.” He sat down behind his desk and swiveled around in his high-backed, black leather chair to face the window. “Of course I’m glad you called. No, you’re not interrupting a thing.”
    Charley frowned. Outside the storm was growing a little less fierce. She could now actually make out the tops of a row of giant palm trees bending in the wind. “Wake up, Bram,” she whispered between clenched teeth. She returned to the sofa, trying not to eavesdrop on Glen’s conversation.
    “No, I have no plans for tonight after work,” she heard him say.
    A nice clap of thunder would be good right about now, she thought, hearing him laugh, and wondering if there was anything she could do to blot out the sound of his voice. She reached across the floor for her purse, thinking she could call Emily in New York, since Emily was the only sibling she hadn’t seen or spoken to today. And certainly Emily would be as delighted as Anne to hear from her.
    “Of course I’d love to see your new apartment,” Glen was practically purring.
    “Oh, for God’s sake,” Charley said out loud, forcing a smile onto her lips as Glen’s head poked around the side of his chair to see what was the matter. “Just looking for something,” she whispered, pulling a white envelope out of her purse. “Found it,” she exclaimed, although the truth was she barely remembered stuffing the letter into her purse before fleeing her office.
    You’ve got mail, she heard Monica say.
    Charley turned the envelope over in her hand, studied the return address. Pembroke Correctional.
    Looks like you have a fan.
    Blocking out the sound of Glen’s suggestive banter, Charley tore open the letter, pulled out the lined white paper filled with girlish script, and started reading.

CHAPTER 4
    January 17, 2007
    Dear Charley,
    Hi. I hope you don’t mind my writing to you. I know how busy you must be, and that you probably get tons of mail, although maybe not too many from prisons. Gee, I still can’t believe I’m really here, even though it’s been over a year now. I was really afraid of coming to this place—have you seen all those scary movies about life in women’s prisons?—but I have to admit, it hasn’t been all that bad. After all the death threats I received from supposedly law-abiding citizens on the outside, it’s actually been something of a relief, to tell you the truth, and so far, nobody’s tried to rape me with a broom handle or anything awful like that. It’s been fairly quiet, to be honest, and I’m happy to say, relatively clean, since I’m a bit of a neat freak.
    The other prisoners have all turned out to be