From his prison cell, Mickey Moody writes to Susan Knox after seeing her name in the papers. Mickey adopts a jokey, self-pitying tone about being locked up, admits that he was stupid and outplayed, and says prison is the price of the game he chose to play. Mickey even apologizes if he killed anyone Susan cared about, says he had hoped Susan might escape, and offers his advice from one prisoner to another: have no regrets and deal with whatever is in front of you.

Mickey then asks Susan to tell him her story, and Susan replies that she is glad she did not get away with anything because prison is where she belongs. Susan explains that while working for Jeff Nolan, she had quietly been stealing from accounts he gave her access to, first taking only small amounts. Susan invested the money, often convinced herself no one was being harmed because she repaid what she took from profits, and gradually came to believe she was clever rather than simply lucky.

Susan says that when her investments started failing, she chased her losses and needed more money than Jeff's accounts could cover. That desperation led Susan to approach Mickey with the criminal proposition that became the wider scheme. Susan accepts full responsibility for walking into that world of her own free will, says she can never forgive Mickey for turning to murder, but also says she can never forgive herself for creating the circumstances that led there. Reflecting that money corrupts people in strange ways, Susan refuses any further correspondence and ends by hoping that both of them may somehow find forgiveness.