On his days off, he goes to the movies. He takes long walks at night and needs three or four fingers of Scotch before he can sleep.
But Ruth Malone is still the first thing he thinks of when he wakes every morning. He tried dating a few girls, but he felt like he was being unfaithful to everyone, so he stopped. Sometimes he sees a certain type of woman in a bar, with a certain way of moving, and although he knows it can’t be her, he always has to make sure.
The date of her parole hearing is marked on his kitchen calendar, winking at him as he fixes dinner. Two weeks before, he cracks and writes her a letter, telling her he’ll be there afterward.
The date of her parole hearing is circled on her calendar, hanging above her bed so it’s the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes. She has tried not to get her hopes up, but hope is all she has. Hope and time to think.
She has tried not to imagine the outside world going on without her. For almost four years she has tried to think only of the day to day in here: the library, the cleaning rota, the line for the bathroom. The feel of her mattress under her back at night and the lines crossed through each day on her calendar before she goes to sleep.
Only occasionally does she allow herself to think about the past. About the kids: the Christmases they had; the feel of Cindy’s hair under her fingers as she braided it; the way Frankie stuck his tongue between his front teeth when he practiced writing his name in shaky letters.
And lately, prompted by thoughts of her parole hearing, snippets of the trial keep cutting in around the edges. Thinking about the trial gets her thinking about Devlin: the way he looked at her on that first morning in her apartment. His broad figure on the witness stand, that deep measured voice echoing across the courtroom. Most of all she thinks about his heavy-lidded eyes staring into hers across countless tables in countless bare and ugly rooms.
One interview with him keeps coming into sharp focus. And now, with time to puzzle it out, she keeps going back to one accusation. To one particular detail that doesn’t add up.
She can’t stop worrying at these loose threads—pulling and pulling and waiting for the whole thing to unravel. Until one morning she wakes—and there it is, clear as day. Suddenly, she knows.
So she writes a note and encloses a visiting order, and she waits.
She has been in this room, or one very like it, a hundred times before. Has sat on the same hard chairs and faced the same visitors across the same tables. Her lawyers. Her mother. Gina.
Lou only visited once, the week after the trial ended.
“I need to think of my business, baby,” he told her. “You know that. I have to think how things might look to my clients.”
She said nothing.
“Everything has to be squeaky-clean. You understand.”
She said nothing, just watched his face as he fell silent. As he turned away. And then as he stood by the door and called for the guard and left without looking back, taking his money for Scott’s retainer with him.
Gina was the only one who could shrug off the prison, take Ruth back into the world for a while. She didn’t talk much about appeals or the courts or the sentence, but she made her laugh about the past.
It’s the smell of this place Ruth hates most. At the beginning, she volunteered for cleaning duty, knowing she’d rather smell bleach and soap than be in the kitchens all day. And the library is better still: the quiet, the smell of old paper. But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t get the oniony stink of too many people living too close together out of her head.
Gina helped block it all out. And then one day she told her that she wouldn’t be able to come anymore either.
“Mick got a job. A good one.”
“Yeah? That’s great, G.”
“It’s in Orange County. It’s a real good opportunity.”
Her words rushed over one another like a river: her excitement, her need to get the news out. To purge herself.
“Well, Orange County’s not so far.”
Gina smiled sadly.
“It’s Orange County in California, honey. I didn’t even know there was more than one. Strange, huh? He got a job all the way out there and he asked me to go with him. He’s even talking marriage.”
She took Ruth’s limp hand in her own strong one.
“I feel like it’s my last chance. If I don’t go . . . well, what am I going to do?”
Her eyes begged for understanding. Ruth tried to smile back. Told her to go. It’s what she’d do herself if she could: run far away where no one knows her.