“She said you should see what you paid for.”

I did not open the envelope.

I could not bear to see them through a photograph.

I wanted to remember Claire the way she was before the blood on her coat.

“Thank you, Miller,” I said.

“I will keep it.”

Miller stood up and buttoned his jacket.

“You have ten years left, Adrian,” he said.

“With good behavior, you might get out in seven.”

“What will you do?”

“I do not know,” I said.

“I will probably stay here.”

“This is the only place I know how to live now.”

Miller looked at me for a long moment.

“You are a strange man, DeLuca,” he said.

“You gave up everything for a woman who will not even write you back.”

“I gave up everything because I loved her,” I said.

“That is not a trade, Miller.”

“It is just a fact.”

He walked out, and the heavy steel door clicked shut.

I took the envelope back to my cell.

I did not open it.

I placed it at the bottom of the box under my bunk, beneath the stack of returned letters.