Chapter 4: The Steps

I asked my father about the warden in the back of his car.

"Your lawyer asked the jail to put my wife in with the general inmates," I said. "Did you tell him to?"

Howard did not even look surprised.

"Of course not."

He patted my knee.

"Lawyers think in procedures, son. He probably saw a bed shortage and made a call. I'll have a word with him."

"Today."

"Today," he said, and smiled at me.

That smile had gotten me out of trouble for thirty years.

I wanted to believe it so badly that I turned my face to the window so he could not see me trying.

The courthouse steps were packed.

My father's lawyer handed me a single sheet of paper with a statement typed on it.

I read it twice in the car.

It was good, and every line was somebody else's.

I stepped up to the bank of microphones with my father's hand on my back.

Flashes went off.

"Five years ago I was taken from the street," I said. "Yesterday I walked out of a cellar."

"The woman who arranged it was my wife."

I stopped.

The paper said, I am heartbroken.

I looked down at it and could not say the word.

"I'm asking the court," I said instead, "for the maximum sentence."

The crowd roared.

A reporter in the front row shoved her phone toward my face.

"Mr. Thayer! Do you believe she did it out of love?"

I thought of a pulse hammering under my thumb.

"No," I said.

It came out sharper than I meant.

My father squeezed my shoulder, proud of me.

I had never felt so sick.

Afterward, Trenton took me to the old barbershop on Main Street.

The barber, a man who had cut my hair since I was seven, hugged me over the cape and would not take a dime.

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