Forbidden

3

I sit in my hotel room patiently and wait to see if Mitch and Scott actually show up.

Something tells me they won't and that they didn't receive my letter, but I hope that feeling will go away and they will show up.

They're probably wondering why, after all these years, I'm reaching out to them out of the blue.

A knock at the door pulls me out of my thoughts.

I open up the door to see Scott and Mitch standing before me and both are equally excited to see me.

 "Come in! I've been waiting to see you two!" I say gesturing for them to come in.

Both Scott and Mitch take me in for a group hug and sit down on the small couch in my hotel room.

"What's up? Why are you reaching out all of a sudden?" Scott asks.

"Just wanting to catch you guys up with the Kirstie case." I say as I pull out a huge envelope from my purse and hand it to them.

"Everything okay?" Mitch asks concerned.

"Let me explains everything to you two boys. The last you two seen of Ms. Maldonado, is when she was being taken away in handcuffs and put into the back of a police car as other cops set up body bags outside of that now abandon house and carry lifeless bodies out to put into those bags." I say.

Mitch gags a little has he probably still has all those images of the bodies in his head.

"Yes. Yes. Move on from the dead bodies part, sweetie." He says.

I sigh and give him a bottle of water while Scott continues to scan through the case file.

"As I was saying, I went to all her court dates when they were in the process of sentencing her. She ended up getting 25 to life with the possibility of parole." I say.

"Who would ever give that woman a chance at living on the outside again after what she did to us?" Scott asks, eyes still glued to the case file.

"I'm not sure. But, as you know, it has been twenty years to the day that she was arrested and almost twenty years to the day that she was sentenced and locked up in a high security prison and with her good behavior on the inside, her parole hearing has been pushed up to this week." I say.

Scott throws down the files and stands up and stares at me with worry in his eyes.

"Tell me it's not true." he says pointing to the files on the coffee table.

All I could do was nod my head and confirm what he just read was all true.

"What? What's going on? What does all this mean?" Mitch asks just as worried as Scott is now.

I sigh and sit down next to Mitch holding his hands in mine.

"It means, she could be getting out of prison within the next two months." I say.

Mitch takes one of his hands from mine and puts it over his month and starts to sob uncontrollably.  

I pat his back to try and calm him down as Scott goes to get some toilet paper for Mitch to wipe his tears on.

"Does this mean I have to up my family and bounce around the country again? I have two sons now and I can't put them through something like that if she gets out." Scott says in a panic.

"I'm going to the parole hearing. What I find out, I will tell you, but until then, I don't have anymore answers for you. Just be prepared for whatever happens." I say.

As I try to calm Scott and Mitch down, I, myself, start to become nervous about the whole situation.

I just hope the next time we meet, I have good news to bring instead of bad.