Lauren visited her sister at least once a month, more often when she could. Revolving her life around Beth’s wasn’t much different from their childhood. Lauren had always taken care of her younger sister. Older by five years, she had been Beth’s mother, father and authority figure as they grew up, because their parents had no time for them. Though the sisters were close back then, Beth had still been a handful. Even at twenty-seven years old, Lauren was still cleaning up her sister’s messes.

She quickly crossed the parking lot and proceeded to the first checkpoint. Lauren hated the prison grounds. Even though Beth was in a separate building from the prison itself, Lauren detested the depressing psychiatric ward. But she hoped that by visiting Beth and keeping her aware of the outside world, her sister would recover faster.

Today Beth sat upright instead of lying in bed, but nothing else had changed. Before her breakdown, Beth had been a stickler for perfection, if not fashion-that was Lauren’s forte and orange had always been her favorite color. But after seeing her sister in the fluorescent prison hue back when she’d originally been processed, Lauren had pulled the color from her portfolio. Beth now wore institutional gray with bold writing on the back, an outfit that would have horrified their grandmother. Something Lauren never mentioned to Beth.

Why upset her sister, who’d eagerly earned Mary Perkins’s approval in a way Lauren never had. While Beth had pleased Mary, Lauren’s one teenage indiscretion had isolated her from her grandmother. Lauren didn’t care. That summer with Jason Corwin had been worth risking her grandmother’s wrath.

Since Beth remained docile, she was never handcuffed for their visits, although guards patrolled the hall outside the room and a nurse regularly checked in.