“What do you mean, no?” he asked. “This is great news. You get to leave. You can come work for me full-time. My wife even found a tiny house for rent. We had to sign the lease for you, so we’ll actually be your landlords. But it’s already furnished. You can sleep there tonight. With Trixie. She’s all yours.”
I shook my head, unable to process what he was telling me. When I finally opened my eyes, both men were staring at me, waiting for me to issue some kind of appropriate response. “The parole board just . . . let me go?” I asked. “Without even talking to me?”
“With your clean track record in here, plus the testimony of Randy and his employees, you were a shoo-in,” Myer told me. And then he did a rare thing—he smiled, too. “You’ve done great work since you came back, Walker. Hopefully you learned your lesson. I don’t want you here again.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered. “I can’t believe it.” My head spun with a muddled mix of excitement and dread. Could I do this? Would I be okay on the outside this time around? I’d have a job. I’d have a place to live and people I worked with who knew and respected me. There’d be no reason to screw things up.
Still, a tiny sliver of doubt niggled beneath my skin. If I’d lost it the last time I encountered children, what was to keep me from losing it again? What if the only way for me to keep the past from destroying me was to stay locked up? What would I do the next time I encountered a child who reminded me of my girls?
“Well, believe it,” Randy said. “I’m here to take you home.”
And that’s when the tears came, hearing that last word. I sniffed them back as best I could. “Thank you,” I whispered. “You’ve done so much for me.” I looked at Myer. “Both of you.”
“I don’t get too many success stories in here,” Myer said. “Don’t screw this up.”
? ? ?
After my release, for the next five years, I led a quiet life, but a good one. It was 1992 and I was thirty-two years old, spending most of my days at the clinic working as a vet tech, assisting Randy with exams or treatment protocols. I was also a trainer for shelter dogs, as well as clients’ animals who were boarded with us. Sometimes, I even brought home foster animals, but with my limited space and the long hours I worked, it was difficult to keep them long-term. I did manage to go back to school and get my bachelor’s of science in animal biology; it took me three years, but fortunately, my time working for Randy counted toward the supervised clinical hours requirement. I had to take out a student loan, but with Randy and Myer’s recommendation, I also received a decent scholarship reserved for former prison inmates.
I still lived in the small, one-bedroom house Randy and his wife had found. The house had a square living room with a fireplace and large, arched windows looking out into the yard. The kitchen was tiny but functional, and the bathroom was just down the hall from my bedroom. After a few years of building a little of my own credit, I had taken over the lease from Randy and Lisa, and with my landlord’s permission, I’d painted all the rooms a creamy ivory and decorated with pieces of furniture I found at a local thrift store. It was perfect for me and Trixie, who had gradually lost her puppy energy and grown into a mellow, extremely well-behaved, sweet girl that slept in my bed and barely lifted her head when my alarm went off at four a.m. to start our day. But by the time I was finished getting ready, she had gone outside through the dog door and sat patiently by her bowl in the kitchen, waiting to be fed.
After work, Trixie and I spent our evenings curled up together on the couch, watching television or reading. Sometimes, if I came across a particularly funny passage in a book or magazine, I’d read it aloud to her, and she’d stare at me with her dark, interested eyes, as though she could understand exactly what I was saying.
When I told Randy about this, he laughed and shook his head. “You need to get out more. To the movies or on a date.”
I’d smiled, too, but waved him off. I liked things as they were. Simple. Uncomplicated. I had a routine and I kept to it. I avoided elementary schools and parks. When I did come in contact with children, with little girls, especially, I felt a little like I was watching my interactions with them from above, policing my every word, ready to jump in and remove myself from the situation if I showed even a twinge of doing or saying something wrong.