I Was Never One of Them novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Thermos

Rhys's POV

They gave me back my belt, my watch and a paper bag with the clothes I had worn in.

The clerk who handed them over would not meet my eyes.

I signed where she pointed.

My own name looked strange to me, Nolan Rhys Briggs, in a clean line, and for the first time it was not a sentence.

The door to the courthouse steps was heavy.

I pushed it open, and the afternoon hit my face.

I had walked out of a prison a year ago on parole, with a bag and a bus ticket and a rule that I stay inside a county line.

This was different.

There was no line.

There was cold air and gray sky and the whole street open in front of me, and I did not know which way to look.

Hazel stood at the bottom of the steps with her hands in her coat pockets.

She was smiling.

It was a small, shaky smile, the kind she gave when she was trying not to cry.

"You're out," she said.

"I'm out."

"What do you want to do first?"

"I don't know." It was true. "I haven't thought about it in eight years."

"That's all right. Someone else has."

She stepped aside.

Behind her, on the bottom step, an old woman in a blue coat was sitting on a folded blanket, with a cane across her knees and a steel thermos in her hands.

My mouth went dry.

I had seen her face in a courtroom, wet with tears, and once on a porch, an hour before sunrise.

I had read her handwriting every Christmas for eight years.

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