Perhaps Vicky and I never felt significant. Vicky White and I have so many similarities. Our stories, Vicky’s and mine are not dress rehearsals, we didn’t get a redo when things went sour. Of course, this is true of all people.
As an innocent young woman, I swan-dived into bearing children, achieving higher education, and producing the American dream. Only 28 years later, the baritone of a convict’s intentions awoke in me a relentless, intoxicating pleasure. Passion streaked from the depths of the cosmos, across eons of time, shizzling, snapping, and sparking like a tesla coil of providence. Maybe the decades of relative drought created in me a magnet of sorts, drawing the pulse to me. Unknowingly, my lifestyle had developed a distinct weakness in me for John Manard’s plight.
Meanwhile, prison, like a Petrie dish under perfectly manipulated lab conditions, induced in John Manard and Casey White high doses of unnaturally subdued passion, or social need, or testosterone, or however you choose to describe it.
Then, as if the concoction weren’t volatile already, the physical confinement and social restrictions made me feel controlled and safe to abandon my personal barriers. To Casey and John, the subtle human communications from Vicky and me signaled, “all systems are go!”
The similarities between Vicky and me are plentiful. After exemplary careers, we fell for convicted murderers and assisted in their non-violent escapes by simply driving away. John and I went to Tennessee and were on the run for 12 days. Casey and Vicky were tracked thru Tennessee and ran for 11 days. John is 21 years younger than me, and Casey is 22 years junior to Vicky. I won’t speculate on Vicky’s state of mind, but I lost everything of value and meaning and seriously considered the path Vicky took.
Vicky White and I had similar stories, right up until the very end. Vicky tragically denied herself the opportunity to explore living with conviction. To me, Vicky’s death symbolizes the result of immeasurable, unrelenting pain which prevented her from seeing hope on the other side of darkness. I don’t blame Vicky.
My path ran through punishment, accountability, and pain, but healing provided a strength of character and opportunities to make the world a better place.
Any decision has the potential of life or death consequences.
None of us is our worst mistake.