The floor of the porch was firm and dry under his step. When he turned the knob, the solid core door swung easily open inside the jamb. The sturdy door and its well-made frame were also LaShawn’s doing—or, perhaps, the Lord’s, depending on your point of view. LaShawn had hired the contractors and had overseen the work, but it was his money—the out-of-court settlement won by LaShawn’s lawyers in his wrongful-imprisonment suit—that had paid the bills for all that construction.
Considering that seven years had been erroneously deducted from LaShawn’s life, the settlement wasn’t much, but it was enough that he could have bought Etta Mae a nice place somewhere else. The problem was, she hadn’t wanted to leave. She loved the neighborhood and her old familiar house. So LaShawn had fixed the place up for her as well as he was able. It wasn’t one of those Extreme Makeover things like they did on TV, but it was enough to get the job done—enough to make the place livable and comfortable.
And now that the job was finished, LaShawn was relieved to see that Etta Mae’s house didn’t look all that different from the other houses on the street. Had the place been too upscale, it would have been nothing more than a magnet for roaming gangbangers looking for something to steal. No, the cosmetic changes were subtle and understated.
New vinyl siding had replaced sagging clapboard. The rickety porch had been rebuilt with a wheelchair ramp added off to one side. Insulation had been blown inside what had once been skimpy, insulation-free walls. Dangerously old wiring and questionable plumbing had been replaced, and the whole thing was covered with a brand-new standing-seam metal roof. Interior doorways had been widened enough to accommodate a wheelchair if and when the time came that Etta Mae might need one rather than her sturdy walker, and the bathroom had been fitted out with one of those easily accessible step-in bathtubs LaShawn had read about in Guideposts.
Why had LaShawn done all that? Because Etta Mae deserved it, that’s why. Because all the while he’d been hell-bent on the wrong path, she’d believed in him and kept on praying for him anyway. Those seven long years he’d been stuck on death row she’d never missed a single month of visiting him. No matter what, she’d found a way to make the grueling six-hundred-mile round-trip journey from Seattle to Walla Walla, rising early enough on her one day off to catch the Sisters of Charity van that took prisoners’ family members back and forth across the state. On those Saturdays she’d be there at the window in the visitors’ room smiling at him and telling him how much she loved him and that God hadn’t forsaken him. And now that Etta Mae’s health was failing due to a combination of diabetes and congestive heart failure, LaShawn wasn’t going to forsake her, either.
He believed with all his heart that Etta Mae was the only reason he was free. She was the one who had begged and cajoled until someone from the Innocence Project had finally taken an interest in his case. She was the one who had pleaded with them to reexamine his trial and the evidence, including the exculpatory DNA evidence, previously concealed by the DA’s office, that had eventually exonerated him of the brutal rape and murder for which he had been convicted.
Somehow, in the process of saving her son’s life, Etta Mae had succeeded in saving his soul as well. Her unshakable belief had been strong enough for both of them. He had still been on death row when someone from the jail ministry had come to see him, bringing him the Good Word that Jesus had died for his sins. And for the first time ever LaShawn had been ready to listen and to turn his sorry life around. And when the miracle had finally happened, when God had sprung wide his prison doors and LaShawn Tompkins had walked out of Walla Walla a free man, he was also a changed man—a thankful and believing one.
His lawyers had won the settlement for him, but by the time the money came to him LaShawn had dedicated his life to doing the Lord’s work. Rather than taking the money for himself, he had spent it on his mother. As for LaShawn? He lived full-time at the King Street Mission, devoting his days and nights to bringing God’s Holy Word to the hopeless people he met there—to troubled, angry people using drugs and booze to mask their anger and pain—people not so different from the one LaShawn Tompkins had been not so very long ago.
“Shawny?” Etta Mae called over the blaring TV news. “Is that you?”
“It’s me, Momma. Come to make sure you eat your supper.”
“Well, come on in, then. Don’t just stand there where I can’t see your face.”
Hanging his dripping jacket on the coat rack, LaShawn kicked off his Nikes and stepped into Etta Mae’s pristine living room. The volume on the TV set was so loud that it was nothing short of miraculous that she had heard the door open and close. LaShawn knew about his mother’s worsening vision problems, but this was something else they needed to discuss—the possibility of Etta Mae’s having her hearing checked. LaShawn didn’t hold out much hope on that score. The first time he had brought up the subject, it hadn’t gone well.