The female officer held me by my elbow and led me to the police car. I was still limping— my ankle felt like it was on fire—but I didn’t care. I deserved whatever pain I was in. The officer opened the back door and helped me turn so I could get inside. She kept her hand on top of my head so I wouldn’t knock it into the roof as I sat down.
Once the door was closed, I looked over one final time and saw the little girl sit up and hug her mother. She had finally stopped crying and had a clean white bandage on her forehead. I leaned my own head against the window, trying not to be sick again, hoping she would be okay. I hoped I hadn’t traumatized her too much.
I waited a long while for the officers to finish taking more statements from the other people in the park, and when they both finally climbed into the seats in front of me, I was more than ready to leave. At least I know where I’m going, I thought as we drove out of the parking lot and onto the street. At least now, I have a place to stay.
? ? ?
The next day, after hearing my side of what happened, my public defender, a short, heavy man with dark pouches of skin under his brown eyes and a thick, Tom Selleck–style mustache, suggested I enter a not-guilty plea. “You had just found out you can’t get your children back,” he said, as we sat together in a small room in the King County jail. “The judge might feel sorry for you.”
“No,” I said. I’d picked up the girl and run away with her into the woods. I was guilty. There was no point in trying to make excuses.
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug.
Later that afternoon at my hearing, I pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping and reckless endangerment of a child, for which the judge issued me a sentence of ten years. It could have been much worse, he told me, if I’d used a weapon or tried to put the little girl in a car and drive away. He cited my past offenses of theft and neglecting my children as adding weight to his decision to put me away for as long as he did. I didn’t argue. I simply stood in the courtroom and listened to the litany of things I’d done wrong. Each word was like a jagged nail pounded into my body, confirmation of how broken and useless I was.
After the sentencing, I spent four weeks in King County jail, waiting to be assigned to a prison. It was only dumb luck that returned me to the women’s facility in Mt. Vernon and the regimented life to which I’d become accustomed over the previous year.
“Well, well, look who’s back!” O’Brien said as she walked into the small space on the cellblock that held my bed and one other. “What happened, Walker? You miss us or something?”
“Something like that,” I said, not wanting to relive what I’d done in the park. I’d tried several times to write my daughters another note after the few sentences I’d written my last morning in the motel, but was only able to get down two words: I’m sorry. I wrote them over and over again, filling page after page, knowing that tiny sentence would never be enough to express just how deeply the roots of my regret were planted inside my heart.
“You get your work assignment yet?” O’Brien asked as she dropped down to sit on my bunk with me. She smelled like grease and bleach.
“No,” I said. “I just got here this morning.” It was late afternoon, and I’d spent the entire day lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling tiles, counting them, trying not to think about anything at all.
She put a hand on top of my thigh. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you back in the kitchen, okay?” She smiled. “It’ll be like old times.”
“Thanks,” I said, grateful she wasn’t pushing me to tell her what I’d done to land back there so quickly. The old hollow sensation had returned and taken over my body, ever since the moment in the woods when I saw the blood rushing down that little girl’s face. It felt as though I were hovering just outside of my skin—me, but not me. There, but not part of anything going on around me. My soul tethered to my body by only a thin wisp of thread.
The next morning after breakfast, my counselor, Myer, called me into his office. I sat down in the same metal chair I’d been in just a month before and folded my hands together in my lap. I stared at the floor.
“So,” he said, leaning back in his own chair. “I guess you didn’t listen to my advice.” I kept my eyes cast downward and didn’t respond, so he sighed, then continued. “You’re being assigned to the vet program. You’ll need to report to the community room for orientation this afternoon at two o’clock.”
“Vet?” I said. “As in war vets?”
“No, Walker. You’ll be working with dogs. Learning how to train them to be guides for people with disabilities. It’s a pilot program, led by a local veterinarian.”