When Robert Died

By Revoy Hamilton

After her husband died, Becky went a little crazy and ended up in prison. She now has to tell her story to the prison psychiatrist, who will determine whether Becky should return to her home as part of an early release program. Her family is concerned about her unusual friendship with a squirrel, and she's not really sure how much she can say about the body in the garage and still go home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Revoy Hamilton
• Release date: Feb 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463823767

Revoy Hamilton

I'm an introvert and don't like to talk about myself. I have always loved to write, I just didn't get around to it for a while. I wrote when I was in elementary school but gave it up, for many reasons. When my father died we found a poem I had written about him way back in 3rd grade, stuck in his wallet. It inspired me to get back to what I love.

Book preview

When Robert Died

A novel by Revoy Hamilton

Copyright 2015 by Revoy K. Hamilton

All Rights Reserved.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Therapy

Part 2: The Woman on the Bus

Part 3: Trial

Part 4: The Color of Anger

Part 5: When Robert Died

Part 6: Rocky

Part 7: Poor Peggy

Part 8: Robert Joseph Asher, III

Part 9: The Color of Faith

Epilogue: Therapy

Epilogue: Folie à Deux

Part 1: Therapy

Becky Asher walked the halls of the prison administration building like a small child in elementary school, looking down at her feet as she walked so she could count every blue tile. Most of the tiles were gray, but every few rows there were random blue tiles installed. The gray tiles of the prison floors reminded Becky of an overcast day, and of imprisonment, but every blue tile reminded her of freedom. She stopped counting when she reached the one open door in that wing of the administration building. By the time she reached it she had counted a total of 58 blue tiles for the day, but it was early. She would reach at least 375 by the end of the day.

Inside the door Dr. Susan Stanton was seated behind her desk, writing furiously in a notebook. She looked up just long enough to smile and motion Becky to take a seat on the worn leather couch.

I’ll be right with you, she said.

The doctor continued writing, trying to catch up on the words that had spilled from her last patient.

Becky waited patiently. She didn’t care if the doctor wrote for their entire session. She would daydream, or maybe even nap. But the doctor finished and closed her notebook.

How many? she asked.

Fifty-eight, Becky answered.

You’ve got a long way to go yet.

It’s early.

They started every meeting that way. Becky had shared her habit of counting blue tiles with the doctor on their first visit. Now it was their third session and the routine of ask and answer soothed her nerves, much like the act of counting the tiles did. It was something to focus on; a way to measure her day that included a reason to move as she tried to beat her record of blue tiles counted in one day (601).

Dr. Stanton moved to sit in a shabby armchair across from Becky.

Today we start talking about your crime.

Becky only nodded.

Tell me what brought you to prison, Becky.

Becky was tempted to say A van, but thought it was still too early in therapy to make jokes about her situation.

They say I went crazy after my husband was murdered, was what she said instead.

But what do you say, Becky?

Lowering her head, Becky stared at her hands, her top teeth worrying the edge of her bottom lip while her fingers twisted and untwisted in her lap.

Susan sat in her shabby chair, pen poised above her steno pad, waiting for her patient to continue. When Becky looked up again, the doctor gave her an encouraging smile. Leaning forward in her chair with her shoulders relaxed and her breathing slow, Susan projected quiet calm that wafted across the tiny coffee table to her patient. She saw Becky take a deep breath as if trying to absorb the calm from the air into her lungs.

The young doctor swept an escaping tendril of hair from her cheek and tucked it behind one ear, where it seamlessly fell in place within the shine of her long, blond hair. She understood that she was pretty, but didn’t care. What Becky and her other patients saw was a woman whose perfectly applied makeup highlighted all that was beautiful about her: unusually dark blue eyes; soft, full lips with a hint of lip gloss over subtle color; smooth, flawless skin with a healthy glow created by the light, expert touch of a brush.

Evenings and weekends Susan spent wearing blue jeans, t-shirts, and flip-flops. With her face scrubbed clean, she was often mistaken for a college student from the nearby university.

What Susan saw in the mirror each morning when she left for work was what she wanted to be: a thirty-something, well-educated, dedicated, and—most importantly—successful psychologist. Education had come to her with little effort; dedication to her patients came from a lifelong desire to help others. At first she had found actual success hard to achieve at the prison. Her first year working with the inmates had been extremely difficult. By the end of the second year she had nearly given up trying to get even one patient to share any real information, or to tell the truth about their crime. Then one day, through an accident of fate and with help from her mother, Susan found a way to get many inmates to move past their distrust of her, to stop avoiding her questions, and to share their secrets.

Within the stark gray walls of the prison, Susan’s fashion statement of shining blonde hair and perfect makeup were a loud, bold statement. Red made frequent appearances in her wardrobe, intermingling with bright blues, yellows, purples, and greens; colors normally reserved for use by small children drawing stick figure families on a scrawled background of grass, sky, and rainbows. Bright sweaters or blouses set the color for the day. She coordinated them with matching multicolored skirts that echoed a color to smart, sensible shoes. Seated across from her patients, her full skirt spread around her to cover the cushion, she felt like the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Wonderland, sitting on a dull brown throne, talking to women who had fallen down a rabbit hole.

Her patients would be surprised to learn that the doctor’s opinion of her own clothes was roughly the same as theirs. Her clothes were bright and awful.

Part 2: The Woman on the Bus

Growing up, Susan didn’t travel much further than the one-stoplight town where she was born. The Stanton family lived to farm and had never produced any offspring with aspirations beyond marriage, farming, and increasing the population of Stantons living in the area. Susan suspected that the only reason she had escaped her siblings’ destiny was because she was lost in a crowd of four brothers and four sisters. As a teenager, she wasn’t interested in dating, cheerleading, or becoming prom queen like her older sisters. She brought home straight As, but her family’s appreciation of her grades was limited to how well she did in home economics and whether her pig would earn a blue ribbon at the fair.

Susan knew it wasn’t that her family didn’t care about her. In fact, it was the complete opposite. They were genuinely happy with their own lives, and they wanted her to be happy too. They just couldn’t imagine any other life or any other place being better than theirs, the family they had been blessed with, and the chance to live and work within the natural beauty of the mountains that surrounded them. Each evening when the brood of Stantons sat down at the long table in the kitchen, they praised Jesus who granted those things to them, and thanked him for dinner.

No one was surprised by the scholarship Susan was offered when she graduated from high school. What surprised them was that she accepted it. Her full four-year tuition would be paid. Susan assured her parents that her decision to attend college was final, but they insisted that she would change her mind once she listened to reason.

All that summer, the evening prayer was updated to include the line And please watch over Susan as she seeks guidance to make difficult decisions. At least once a week someone in her family reminded her that there was a perfectly good college in nearby Ashville, and brochures and booklets would mysteriously appear on her nightstand.

By the time Susan left for Raleigh in August, her family had accepted her decision, and her parents snuck a check into her suitcase to help cover expenses. The family was happy believing she would finish her education and then come home to start her career.

After graduation, Susan stayed in Raleigh to work toward her Ph.D. in psychology. Her parents thought it was a meaningless, useless degree, but when she graduated with honors and started her first residency, they became proud to the point of embarrassment. With her name officially changed to Dr. Susan Stanton, they shoved her forward at family events as if she could sing her knowledge of psychology to dazzle aunts, uncles, and cousins with her hard-won skills.

Susan spent a one-year residency at a veteran’s hospital, and then accepted an offer from the North Carolina Department of Corrections in Raleigh. She wanted the challenge of treating the types of mental illnesses found among prisoners. Although not severe enough to be granted a verdict of innocent by reason of insanity, inmates at the prison would still be a challenge. The crimes they committed indicated an extreme dysfunction or mental illness, but the psychiatric community largely ignored the cases of mental illness for legally sane criminals.

Her parents called Susan’s career choice a quest to diagnose the origins of evil, which, they said sternly, was a waste of her degree, since the answers she searched for could only be found in the Bible. Besides, they insisted, it was too dangerous for a bookish country girl who had never even learned to shoot a gun to be locked in a prison surrounded by evil all day. To allay her parents’ fears about their daughter working with the children of Satan eight hours a day, Susan took a lesser position as a psychologist for the women’s facility. It was less money and, in truth, the female criminals could be just as dangerous as the men, but her parents were appeased. Susan was happy enough with her decision since the female inmates could be even more interesting; criminal tendencies had to bypass a female’s inherent instincts to nurture and protect. Either way, to her it was better than opening a private practice where she might be limited to treating delusional suburbanites and anxious executives.

As time passed, the elder Stantons learned to accept the joys of having a single, childless doctor in the family. Because of the prison staff’s holiday rotation schedule, Susan couldn’t always spend time with her family in the mountains for Christmas. She would miss them, but she wasn’t completely unhappy with the idea of a holiday spent with a few friends and quiet meals at home watching reruns of A Christmas Story. Her parents, however, were afraid she would be lonely, so they dubbed those years Susan’s Special Christmas, traveling to Raleigh to celebrate. They spent a few days with her making the rounds of the capital city’s holiday attractions and eating dinners out. They loved all of their children equally, but Susan’s Special Christmas was easily their new favorite holiday.

That first year, Susan’s mother had nearly burst with excitement Christmas morning, waiting for Susan to open gifts marked in bold red as FROM SANTA!!! Glossy paper and cheerful ribbons covered boxes that contained separate pieces of a complete outfit, all in a theme color of lemon yellow. Susan saw the glow through the tissue wrapping when she opened the first box that held a skirt. The fabric’s design of impossibly large, bright yellow flowers was set against green ivy, which matched the green of the blouse she unwrapped next. By the time she started to peel open the wrapping on the third box, she was practicing what she would say the following year when her parents asked why they had never seen her wear her nifty new outfit. Susan was holding one of the low-heeled pumps in the air, showing it to her father, when her mother exclaimed, See, sensible shoes can be pretty! Her mother had even stuffed the shoes with yellow and green barrettes for her hair. She hadn’t worn barrettes since third grade and then just simple silver or gold ones.

The day after Christmas was a Friday and Susan was scheduled to work. She had plans to meet her parents afterward to treat them to dinner at their favorite restaurant, since they would be leaving early on Saturday morning.

You can wear your new outfit to work and then go straight to dinner looking fabulous! her mother told her, smiling happily and clapping her hands in delight at having found the perfect gift for her atypical daughter.

Wearing the horribly unsuitable new outfit, Susan left for work the next morning carrying a large shoulder bag. She fit a pair of black slacks, a gray sweater, and a pair of flats into it, to change into before she met with her first patient. She didn’t expect much traffic on the day after Christmas, but the weather had dipped to freezing overnight and accidents on black ice left her barely crawling down the highway for 45 minutes. She made it to her office fifteen minutes after her first patient, who was waiting in the hall for her to unlock the door.

You have to mark me down for the full hour you know, since this is your fault.

I know, Oneida.

Susan unlocked the door and Oneida Waters took her place on the couch. She stashed her purse in her desk and hung her coat on a hook before she settled into her chair with a steno pad and pen.

Oneida was Susan’s age, but looked at least 10 years older. She was unnaturally thin, with skin that sagged from her bones. Her face was covered in dark blotches and acne scars, and her eyes were as dull as old pennies. Overlapping needle marks covered her inner elbows. Under her prison uniform, her legs and skinny torso were spotted and crisscrossed by scars left from abusive family members and a long string of violent boyfriends. Her most recent boyfriend lived nearby but out of reach, on death row.

On that day after Christmas, Susan sat across from Oneida in her bright outfit and expected to receive an insult couched as a joke about her appearance, but Oneida had simply looked over the outfit and given a quick humph of surprise and a small smile. Normally, Oneida’s words sliced through the air, scalpel-sharp with anger and drenched with obscenities.

Who do you think you are, bitch? she would start, and then answer herself. You ain’t nobody special. This here is some worthless shit, and I shouldn’t have to fuckin’ be here, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna answer any of your stupid fuckin’ questions, so stop asking me. I’m just here to see something other than my cell and put in my fuckin’ hour, that’s all. I ain’t fuckin’ telling your sorry ass nothing.

Oneida had always kept her word about that, silently fuming with one arm across a bony ribcage and the other elbow resting on it, holding her hand to her mouth so she could chew a thumbnail. She kept her legs crossed and the sessions were accompanied by the quiet tap-tap-tapping of her foot against the table between them.

Oneida simply wouldn’t talk.

Susan had read a summary of the crime in Oneida’s file, so knew that she and her boyfriend, with Oneida’s five-year-old son looking on, killed an elderly man who had already given up his wallet and jewelry. He was holding his hands in the air when he was shot.

Hello, Oneida, Susan greeted her patient on that morning after Christmas.

Oneida quietly answered, Hey, Doc.

Later, Susan would remember that quiet statement as her miracle moment; the session that changed everything. With little prompting and no chewing of nail or tapping of foot, Oneida had started talking that day. Her sentences remained heavily peppered with profanities, but she had finally aimed her anger at the people she was angry with, instead of Susan. When her hour was up, Oneida said good-bye and left quietly instead of stomping out wordlessly and slamming the door.

Check ya next week, Doc.

Susan had given up on changing Oneida’s mind—you can’t win them all—so she had been prepared to again write Patient still blocking in her steno pad. She had hoped some day in the future to gain her patient’s trust, but she hadn’t expected that day after Christmas to be the day.

Still feeling like a large, brightly wrapped Christmas package, Susan met with