The Inmate (3)

For a moment, I am speechless. When the warden interviewed me, I had asked about the last person working here, and he said that she had left for “personal reasons.” He didn’t happen to mention that she was arrested for selling narcotics to prisoners.

It’s sobering to think that the last person who had this job before me is now incarcerated. I’ve heard that once you’re in the prison system, it’s hard to get out of it. Maybe the same is true for people who work here.

Dorothy notices the look on my face and her expression softens just the tiniest bit. “Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s not as scary as you think. Really, it’s just like any other medical job. You see patients, you make them better, then you send them back to their lives.”

“Yes…” I rub the back of my neck. “I was just wondering… Am I going to be responsible for seeing all the prisoners in the penitentiary? Like, do I just cover a segment or…?”

Her lips curl. “No, you’re it, girlie. You’re seeing everyone. Any problem with that?”

“No, not at all,” I say.

But that’s a lie.

The real reason I was reluctant to take this job isn’t that I’m scared a prisoner will murder me with my own shoe. It’s because of one of the inmates in this prison. Someone I knew a long time ago, who I am not eager to see ever again.

But I can’t tell that to Dorothy. I can’t reveal to her that the man who was my very first boyfriend is an inmate at Raker Maximum Security Penitentiary, currently serving life without the possibility of parole.

And I’m the one who put him here.





Chapter 2


When I pull onto the street of my parents’ house in my old blue Toyota, I’ve got a laminated ID badge for the Raker Penitentiary in my handbag. Dorothy gave me an ominous warning about not letting it fall into the wrong hands, but based on my access privileges, I’m pretty sure the only thing somebody could do with it is steal some Band-Aids and use the employee toilet. Still, I’ll guard it with my life.

Despite the sour note on which I left town over a decade ago, I loved growing up in Raker. It’s a beautiful town, with trees on every corner, picturesque old houses, and neighbors who won’t automatically avert their eyes when they pass you on the street like in Queens. And when you look at the sky at night, you can make out the individual constellations, instead of just a few random dots of light that are probably just airplanes.

This is exactly the sort of place where a child should grow up. This is exactly what my little family needed.

I park outside the two-car garage, which is a holdover to the old days, when my parents would park in the garage and I had to park outside or on the street. Old habits die hard. I still think of this as their house, even though it’s not anymore. It’s mine—all mine.

After all, they’re both dead now.

When I unlock the front door, the sound of the TV wafts into the foyer, along with the smell of cooking meat. I close my eyes and for a moment, I let myself fantasize about some alternate universe in which I’m coming home to my family and my partner is in the kitchen, cooking dinner.

But of course, it’s nothing but a fantasy. There’s never been a partner in my life who has been around enough to cook dinner. I’m beginning to wonder if there ever will be. The delicious smell is courtesy of the babysitter, who was kind enough to get dinner started.

“Hello?” I call out. “I’m home!”

I wait for a moment, wondering if Josh will come out to greet me. There was an age when Mommy coming home was followed by the scrambling of little feet and a warm body hurling itself at my knees. Those kinds of greetings are less common now that Josh has turned ten years old. He still loves me, don’t get me wrong, just not quite so emphatically.

Sure enough, a second later, Josh stumbles into the foyer in his bare feet. This is the last week before school starts, and he’s taking advantage of it by spending ninety percent of his time on the sofa. Either watching television or playing Nintendo. I shouldn’t let him do it, but soon enough, there will be school and homework and sports teams. His big thing is Little League, and that doesn’t start till the spring, but when it gets closer, he’ll want me to take him to the park to practice.

“Hi, Mom!”

I hold out my arms, and he falls into them, not entirely reluctantly. “Hey, kiddo. How was your day?”

“Okay.”

“Did you do anything besides sit on the couch?”

He grins at me. “Why would I?”

Josh brushes his brown hair out of his eyes. He needs a haircut, which, if history is any indication, will be done in the bathroom over the sink. But he’s definitely getting a haircut before school starts. Every day, the kid looks a bit more like his father, and with his hair shaggy like that, the resemblance is enough to make my chest ache.

A timer goes off in the kitchen, and I head in that direction as the smell of baking chicken intensifies. God, I miss home-cooked meals. My mother used to cook most nights, but I hadn’t lived under her roof for a long time before I moved here for good last month, following her death.

I approach the kitchen just as Margie is pulling a tray out of the oven. Margie is a local grandma who is going to be watching Josh when I am working. He tried to protest that he didn’t need a babysitter, but I’m not comfortable with him being alone for hours while I am forty-five minutes away—at a prison. Besides, Josh is only ten years old. And he’s not exactly a mature ten.