Chapter 16
Sixteen
Outside, the sun beat down as I followed Sam back to our automobile.
In the back seat, I turned my sweaty face toward the driver’s open window when we passed the rock fencing along the men’s prison.
Soon, farms and cornfields appeared in the distance.
Cows cooled themselves in ponds while horses turned to their run-in sheds for shade.
In a few minutes, the dusty two-lane road merged into one soldiered by tall warted trunks of crowning oaks. A collie barked and gave chase to the rumbling automobile, and I became more miserable as the distance between us grew wider.
How I missed him. I’d spent my whole life waiting for someone like Jackson. That one soul who’d been searching for that someone like me.
I pressed fingers to the corners of my eyelids, quelling the tears. Just to see a loving face that I know’d loved me would be a balm for the aching loneliness of prison life.
The guard eased the automobile into the curving necklace of tire-rutted roads. Ahead, the women’s gun tower appeared, and I trembled, feeling the despair press down. When he stopped to check in at our gate, I stared out the window in disbelief as we drove through.
He wore faded-tan britches and a white T-shirt that I know’d the prison had issued. His face looked gaunt, his damp curls tousled, and he’d lost some weight, but it was him all the same. Jackson.
Directly, I darted my eyes to the rearview mirror. Sam’s gaze dropped to the windshield, and I quietly pressed a palm against my window.
To my husband.
Lightly pressing again and again. Silently screaming to Jackson, willing his eyes to lock with mine.
I gulped back shaky breaths to silence my loud pleas.
I’m here.
Here, Jackson.
Just one glimpse would be like holding you again and carry me home.
Please look, Jackson.
Please.
But Jackson didn’t see me as he and another prisoner carried ladders and paint cans toward an official white van, where a guard stood watch beside it. The men began loading the vehicle with their supplies.
Jackson opened the van door and abruptly paused and looked over his shoulder toward my automobile. His eyes narrowed and slowly filled with surprise, then tenderness.
I raised my trembling hand higher on the hot pane and pressed in close, collecting this memory of him.
Us.
Home.
The moment was a gift I would magpie away into the deepest core of my being.
I crowded in closer to the window.
Jackson’s gaze held mine. Then sorrow shadowed his face when their guard pointed him and the other prisoner into the van.
“Looks like Warden Alton finally sent over his volunteers to paint the library,” Sam remarked. “Let’s hurry and git you inside, Lovett. Been a long day for ol’ Sam here. My missus’ll be waiting with my slippers and a stiff bourbon.”
Sam pulled into the employee lot, searching for an empty parking spot as I watched the other vehicle pass by, gaining speed. Taking my husband back to his prison. Me back to mine. The moment passing with our lives in its iron-fisted grip.
My palm slid down the window as I realized he’d volunteered like myself, but hoping to see me.