Every second I wait made my blood pump faster and harder until all I heard was a roar in my ears, drowning out the loud buzzer that sounded the alarm.
The doors slowly opened.
I didn’t look back.
I walked out into the bright, but frigid winter sun, clutching my meager belongings to me. The echo of the interstate in front of me, a wall of cornfields beyond.
A taxi waited, already given my new address to a woman’s halfway house where I would spend at minimum, the first six months.
I was moving to Des Moines.
Freed from prison.
I’d never been more terrified of blue skies and snow and semi-tall buildings in my life.
But I could do this. For Josh. For Candace for believing in me. And most of all, for me, because six years ago I was forced into making a decision that would haunt me forever, but now—
Now, I could live for me.
2
Lilly
Ten Months Later
Judith Falkner was a terrifying woman, and I’d spent six years in prison, so that was saying something. Heavyset and round, she had onyx eyes and hair to match. Harsh features with her painted-on eyebrows and blood-red lipstick, the first day I stepped into her diner, Judith’s, at the recommendation of Ellen, my knees knocked together so hard I was certain she heard them. I was positive she could smell my fear.
It amazed me to this day how her diner could make a decent turnover when she was borderline rude to the customers, took no shit from anyone—not even her husband Chaz who did the cooking—and after six months of working here, I’d yet to see her smile.
The diner wasn’t the first place I worked after getting set up with my parole officer. I was lucky that Ellen seemed to really care about finding a good fit because the first few jobs were pretty ugly. Luckily, she seemed to understand the reason why they didn’t work out wasn’t because of me or my job performance, but other circumstances and she hadn’t quit trying to find me somewhere I’d be comfortable.
Judith gave me a job when getting a job was nearly impossible, and for that, I’d spent the last six months trying to get on her good side. Last week, I was pretty sure I almost saw a hint of a smile. Maybe.
Progress.
She came toward me where I was setting up my area behind the diner’s countertop bar where in between customers, I tried to study. “Have a good night, Judith. Pies look incredible as always.”
She untied her apron and flung it into the laundry bin where our uniforms went every night. “They better. Been doin’ this long enough.”
She huffed and poured a fresh cup of coffee into a travel mug. I was certain caffeine fueled her body instead of blood.
I grinned down at my accounting notebook. “Drive safe and get some rest.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Don’t do anything stupid tonight.” She slammed her hand against the metal swinging doors, jolting the two customers we had at two different tables out of their late-night musings, and left.
I grinned at the customers and then checked to see if their coffee was topped up before I skirted back behind the bar.
We served greasy, fatty food few people other than truckers, bikers, and drunks wanted. Right off I-80, most of the customers were truckers looking for a late-night fix before they got back on the road overnight, or a thick meal that clung to their bones before they slept. The strip club up the street brought in interesting characters in the earliest morning hours.
When Judith hired me, she explained all this and asked if I could hack it.
“I spent six years in prison, ma’am. I can handle a few drunks and boob grabs.”
“Hmph. We’ll see.” She tossed me an apron and asked my measurements for a uniform — putrid green with a white collar, it buttoned up and flared out above my knees like we were extras in the movie Grease—the original one. I started two days later.
Outside the occasional lewd comment, and as suspected, boob and ass grabs, working the graveyard shift wasn’t all bad. Some nights, it was the best thing for me.
The nights were hardest since getting released. During the day, I could keep busy, go for walks and attend the nearby community college to finally finish a degree. They had an inmate prison partnership with the women’s prison I attended, which meant my schooling cost a minimal amount, most of it funded through the state. They believed prisoners who got degrees were less likely to reoffend and end up back behind chain-link fences and drab gray walls.
I figured it was a fifty-fifty chance for most. Too many women had too long of histories. Hell, I was in prison with a grandma, mom, and daughter all at once. Three generations, a life they couldn’t escape even when they tried. For some, a degree didn’t do jack when they left prison and ended up right back in old neighborhoods.
But me?
I had nothing else to do with my time except at least try to get a decent job. Something where I could work hard, nine to five, upgrade my rundown studio apartment to a one-bedroom, and then spend the next however many years I had, enjoying my freedom.
I’d once had elusive, far-reaching dreams. Plans. Goals.
Those changed the night Josh died.
During the day I could stay busy enough so I didn’t think about anything else but what was right in front of me. It was the silence of the night that ate at me, where my mind couldn’t still. It took years in prison to learn how to forget about what I had before, what was taken from me—what I took from myself.
It was harder with the taste of freedom on my tongue and the feel of it in my fingertips. When I could lie down in a bed that was only slightly thicker than my cell mattress, where I could wrap myself in a fuzzy, warm blanket from the Dollar General and stare at the stars and imagine I was right back in my bedroom in my parents’ house, with Josh down the hall and at least the pretense of happiness within the walls of our home.
That illusion shattered in a glorious mess of steel and glass and blood, and I was still paying the price.
So yeah, I didn’t mind the night shift and the occasional lewd comments from truckers or drunks who thought a waitress at a diner would do the same things the dancers at the strip club offered. Chaz, with his biceps as big as tree trunks and his face as mean as a starving lion, handled them quickly and kept me safe.
It was skirting nine-thirty when a customer came in. I was head down in my accounting, numbers and concepts blurring together. Math I could do. Hell, science I could do. Who knew what happened when accounting was placed in front of me, but everything went sideways as I studied, restudied, crumbled papers into wastebaskets, and tried again.
The beep of his key fob alerted me to his arrival right before the jarring bell dinged above the door when he walked in.
Like always, he nodded his head in my direction. My gaze stayed on him as he ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper full head of hair. He was tall, the kind of guy you knew still tried to take care of himself as best he can. And it worked, because even though he was probably close to my father’s age, he was still handsome in the way you knew when he was in his late twenties. He had it going on. He dripped money in an easy manner that told me life had been easy for him, successful, and that he smiled and laughed a lot.
“Good evening, Lilly,” he said, and went straight to what I now called his chair at the other end of the bar opposite me.