Mrs. Roy
**Penitentiary Sanatorium SHIT Australia**
"So, what do you think?" I smile at him and watch as he lowers his head, intently looking at the first illustrated edition of *Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea*, published in 1871. His uncle managed to buy it from a French collector so that I could gift it to him on his eighteenth birthday.
"You always manage to surprise me, Gim." Jon's intense blue eyes lift to meet mine, giving me a warm smile. For a few moments, almost a few seconds, it feels like going back five years, to the Roy mansion, where he and I spent most of our time in the library, exploring all the books inside.
"Well, I assume you didn’t travel for hours just to bring me this..." He places the book on the side table and slowly walks toward me. His expression is devoid of emotion. The kind smile from a few seconds ago is gone, replaced by dead eyes, like a predator’s. He stops just inches from the glass wall separating us and slips his fingers into the pocket of his white uniform pants. His head lifts as he looks behind me, studying the large mirror on the wall.
"Hello, Uncle!" Jon says, smiling, tilting his face to his shoulder to tease Jonathan, who is in the other room, watching us along with the psychiatrist who takes care of Jon. "Well, I would invite you to sit down," his voice drags as he returns his gaze to me, "but as you can see, my accommodations don’t allow you to join me."
"I'm fine standing," I reply and step to the side, observing the window. "You didn’t respond to my letters; I wanted to know how you’re doing."
"Oh, there wasn’t much to tell! As you can see, I don’t get out much; I practically live locked up!" He raises his hand and gestures with his fingers. "But I read all of them. By the way, congratulations on your graduation. So, are you already working in your field?"
I stop walking and turn to him, nodding positively. "Yes, I graduated a year ago, Jon. I opened a practice at the end of last year in Los Angeles," I say politely, raising my fingers to slowly rotate the wedding ring on my finger while looking at him.
"Oh, it would be useful for some of the women in this place to learn how to fuck! You could give them a lesson someday," he teases me, belittling my degree while also revealing that he’s been having sex inside the sanatorium.
"Maybe, why not?!" I keep my smile as I respond, not feeding his narcissistic ego.
"Why are you here, Ginger? Why did my uncle allow you to come here after five years?" Jon turns his face to the mirror again, keeping his eyes locked on it.
The truth is, Jonathan didn’t permit it; I came against his will after practically creating a nasty fight between us to bring me here. In the five years that have passed since I last saw Jon and he shot a bullet at me, Jonathan would go into protective mode at just the thought of letting me be close to Jon again. The only people who came to visit him were Roy and Baby, and both were against my coming here. So the only way I could communicate with Jon was through letters.
I started writing them just under four years ago. I told Jon about how Roy and I reunited and about my travels during the first sabbatical I took for myself after fleeing the church, leaving behind a marriage I didn’t want with a man unsuitable for me. I detailed my series of adventures, which strangely, I felt the need to share with him. Months later, I wrote to inform him of Aunt Charlotte’s death. She had suffered a heart attack suddenly, with no time to get her to the hospital. Six months later, I sent a letter to Jon in which I wrote about the day I was getting married to Roy in a modest ceremony, with peach-colored decorations, having only me and Jonathan, Baby, and Dexter as witnesses, along with the priest, in a small church in southern Italy.
None of my letters received replies, but I still wrote to him. I knew that the letters were a way for me to still feel connected to him, as if I could see that young boy I had grown fond of when I arrived at the Roy mansion as a temporary escort, which would forever change the course of my life. But there was one piece of information I didn’t want to write; I wished I could tell him personally. I understand Jon’s diagnosis perfectly, what the doctors say about him, his genetic inheritance from his paternal grandmother, Sonja. The lack of empathy, emotion, or affection for those around him, the egocentrism and narcissism fueled by his psychopathy. Jon has never shown any remorse for pushing Bob down the stairs and causing the young man’s death. I watched the footage of him recounting with pure boredom to the psychiatrist how he killed his maternal grandmother and watched her body be dismembered by Lira, his second cousin. The two hid the old woman’s limbs inside the refrigerator.
He is a demon, cold and perverse, wearing the angelic face of a young man, whom in my heart, I still wish to see as the innocent Jon.
"Why don’t you take off that jacket? It’s warm in here," he asks calmly, crossing his left leg over the right and slowly swinging his foot.
I cross my arms over my belly, shaking my head. "I’m fine like this, Jon." I walk slowly back to the glass wall separating us. "I heard you enjoy playing chess and have found a companion to pass the time."
"Just a daily exercise I do to stimulate my brain." Jon shrugs, stretching his arm to grab the book I brought him, which he had placed on the table, and looks at it with little interest. "My game partner is silence; I appreciate that about him."
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