Coming Home(171)

There was nothing tolerable about this place. Nothing uplifting. Nothing redeeming. Nothing but the torturously unhurried passing of time.

He didn’t give a shit if there were no barbed-wire fences surrounding the property. It didn’t change the fact that he was living his life away from everything and everyone who mattered to him. That he didn’t even feel like his own person anymore. That every move he made had to be approved. Every decision, every step he took had to be sanctioned by authority.

His lawyer had failed to mention that the lack of perimeter fences wouldn’t compensate for how incredibly degrading it felt to be treated like a child twenty-four hours a day. The absence of sharp shooters in towers couldn’t make up for the constant misery of not being trusted.

Danny couldn’t resign himself to the fact that most of the people in charge had no reason to view him as trustworthy or honorable or decent. Most of them viewed him as a f*ck-up. A criminal who raised suspicion, someone who had to be watched and questioned at every turn.

There were a couple of exceptions—those guards who managed to make him feel somewhat human even while doing something like frisking him for contraband—but most of them spoke to the inmates like they were shit on their shoes.

At first, Danny tried to rationalize their behavior with the fact that these men spent their lives surrounded by people who had broken the law—some worse than others and many more than once. He reasoned that after years and years of witnessing a revolving door of crooks and felons and delinquents, their tolerance must have worn pretty thin.

Still, it didn’t make him feel any less shitty—or any less angry—when he was on the receiving end of that intolerance. Eventually he gave up trying to justify their behavior and accepted the fact that everyone had a role to play; they were the judgmental pricks on a power trip and he was a piece of shit criminal, and that was that.

Three weeks, and they had already managed to get inside his head.

Maybe he was never as strong as he thought.

Danny lifted his head off the pillow and looked at the clock on the wall. Any minute now, she’d be here. They were going to call his name, and he would make his first trip to the visitor’s center, and Leah would be standing before him.

And it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Because instead of excitement, there was dread. Instead of eagerness, there was panic. And instead of relief, there was shame.

He was so afraid she’d be able to see it—that he was already different. That they’d both given him too much credit.

He didn’t want to let her down. He didn’t want her to wonder what would be left of him after another nineteen months if three weeks had already affected him.

It was all so f*cking humiliating.

He didn’t know how to keep the darkness of his thoughts from her, and if she saw it, what would she think? Would she pity him? Be just as disappointed in him as he was in himself? Begin distancing herself from him?

The thought alone was enough to incapacitate him, because he realized she would probably be better off leaving him at this point. He would be destroyed, completely and utterly gutted, but that seemed to be the path he was on anyway.

Leah didn’t have to be subjected to this.

Danny rolled his head to the side as Troy walked into their cell dressed in his grays, one of two authorized outfits inmates were permitted to wear. A gray sweat suit was the required attire for the rec area or the gym; for everything else, there was a khaki jumpsuit.

“You working out?” Danny asked.

“Nah, just got back,” Troy said, sifting through the small locker in the corner of the room. He pulled out a pack of tortillas, some dried pepperoni, and a little bag of shredded cheese, and Danny knew Troy was about to make what he called a “bootleg stromboli.” He’d taught Danny how to make them during his first week at Fort Dix, after he’d already grown tired of the shit down at the mess hall.