Chapter 3: What Mina Remembers

Elena woke to the sound of someone unlocking the laundry room.

She had slept in short stretches, listening for footsteps on the upper walkway. A guard collected her for breakfast before she could speak to Mina. By the time she returned, the laundry carts were gone.

She checked the disciplinary notice tucked in her paperback. Holt had signed it at 2:14 in the afternoon. The kitchen worker’s shift had ended at two. The numbers would matter later, if Elena could connect them to someone willing to say what they had seen.

Until then, a signature was only ink.

During the morning count, Tess passed her cell. She did not slow down, but a folded scrap fell beside the door.

Elena waited for the guard to turn the corner before retrieving it.

I got dinner. They took mine this morning.

No name, no accusation. Enough to tell Elena that yesterday’s small victory had already been answered.

At lunch, she asked the serving worker for the meal she was entitled to. The worker checked a list, then gave her a tray with half a sandwich and no fruit.

“That’s not what’s on the board,” Elena said.

“It’s what I have for you.”

“Then write down what you served.”

The worker’s face tightened. “Keep the line moving.”

Elena accepted the tray. She had learned what she needed: the missing food could be made to disappear from her meal before Vera had to touch it.

Mina sat at a corner table. Elena joined her with the thin sandwich and said nothing about the towel. Mina looked at the tray, then across the room at Holt.

“You’re making them nervous,” Mina said.

“Good.”

“Nervous people make mistakes. They also hurt whoever’s close.”

Elena thought of Tess’s note. “I know.”

“Do you?” Mina’s voice sharpened. “Sofia thought she knew what they’d do. She wasn’t foolish, Elena. She just couldn’t bear watching it happen to someone else.”

It was the first time Mina had used her name. Elena leaned forward.

“Tell me about the letter.”

Mina pushed a crumb around her tray. “She wrote names. Dates. She made a list of every woman who lost food after she refused to pay Vera. She asked me to read it.”

“Did you?”

“I told her to tear it up.”

Elena kept her voice steady. “And she didn’t.”

“No. She said she could send it to the state office. She said there was an address inmates were allowed to use.” Mina closed her hand around the crumb. “The day she took it to outgoing mail, Holt was there.”

“Did you see him take it?”

“I saw her give him an envelope. Two days later, they moved her upstairs.”

“Then?”

“Then she stopped telling me what she was writing.”

Elena felt a painful flare of disappointment. “You said the letter never left.”

“She found it in the laundry. Torn open.” Mina’s eyes rose to hers. “Your sister showed me the first page. She asked me to hide what she could save.”

The paper in the towel hem.

“Do you still have it?”

“I moved it this morning.”

“Why?”

“Because someone went through the clean towels after I spoke to you.”

Elena let a beat pass. “Mina, if you hand it to me, they’ll search me.”

“I know.”

“If you keep it, they’ll search you again.”

Mina’s mouth tightened. “I know that too.”

They separated without another word. Elena spent the afternoon in her cell, barred from the yard, listening to the movement of carts and counting the minutes between each guard’s round. She had a way to report what she found, but she would not draw attention to Mina until she knew whether the paper carried anything useful.

Just after dinner, Tess stopped at her door.

“Your sister used to fix the cuffs on the laundry coats,” she said, staring down the corridor.

Elena rose. “You knew Sofia?”

“Not well. She gave my roommate food when she was sick.” Tess swallowed. “Mina said you were asking about her.”

“Only if you want to talk.”

Tess glanced at the camera at the far end of the walkway. “The day they moved Sofia, Vera had everybody keep away from the laundry. Said something was missing.”

“What?”

“She wouldn’t say. But she made us turn out our pockets.”

“Was Holt there?”

“He watched.” Tess backed away. “That’s all I know.”

It was more than Elena had known that morning. If Vera had searched the women, she had been looking for something taken from the opened letter. Mina’s hidden page might be the very thing both Vera and Holt had failed to recover.

Elena went over Sofia’s last postcard in her mind. It had said the laundry was noisy enough to make an honest conversation possible. At the time, Elena had pictured her sister finding a friend among the other women. Now she wondered whether Sofia had been telling her where she kept the only account of what was happening. She wished she had understood the hint while Sofia could still answer her questions.

At evening count, Elena put in a request to see the facility nurse. She had scraped her heel on the damaged bunk slat that morning. The cut was real and small, but it gave her a reason to leave the upper corridor while Mina finished her shift.

The nurse cleaned the scrape and handed her a fresh bandage. When Elena returned, a stack of folded laundry had been left outside her cell. On top lay a standard issue coat with one cuff turned inside out.

Elena carried the stack inside. She waited until the count officer passed before testing the cuff. The stitching was newer on one side. She worked a loose thread free with her fingernail and slid out a narrow piece of paper.

It was not Sofia’s whole letter. It was a list, written in her unmistakable slanting hand.

Six inmate names. Four dates. Beside each date, the same initials:

D.H.

Holt’s first name was Daniel.

At the bottom Sofia had pressed so hard that the pencil nearly cut the page.

Ask Mina what happened after the lights went out.

Elena looked toward the laundry door. Mina stood there with an empty cart, watching her.

Before Elena could cross the corridor, Holt emerged from the stairwell. He stopped between them and held up a small red apple.

“Looking for this, Moretti?”