Chapter 40 #2
My eyes blurred. The pressure behind them was a physical ache. He hadn’t been talking about our marriage when I overheard him yesterday. I had taken those two lines, carved them into a weapon, and used them on myself.
The questions that followed were practical—the kind you ask when you’re looking for holes.
Where would Wesley be living? Had the property owner provided documentation?
(Yes.) What were the terms of employment?
(Probationary period, supervision, a schedule that left no gaps big enough to fall through.) Who was responsible for transport the first week while his driver’s license reinstatement was processed?
(Uncle Hank, who had rearranged his carpentry job.)
They asked Wesley who he would call if he felt himself sliding, and his eyes flicked to me, then to our great aunt. “Them,” he said simply. He didn’t say my mother. A tremor went through my body, so small it could’ve been a shiver.
At the end, the chairwoman set her pen down, and the commissioners leaned their heads together for a few hushed exchanges. My pulse thundered in my ears. My knee bounced a little; Roxie’s hand landed on it like a paperweight.
When the chairwoman spoke again, her tone had softened by a degree that most people might not have noticed. “Mr. Maddox, the board is prepared to grant parole with the following conditions…” It was a list of strings. It sounded like freedom anyway.
The word grant cracked open something inside me. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until it came rushing out on a short, ragged laugh that turned to a sob in the space of a heartbeat. I pressed the tissues Roxie had given me to my mouth and hoped I wasn’t making a spectacle.
Wesley’s shoulders dropped an inch. His eyes closed. When he opened them, they were wet. He nodded, quick and sharp. “Yes, ma’am,” he said to each condition, like he was accepting terms of peace.
The hearing adjourned as abruptly as it had started. One of the officers touched Wesley’s shoulder and said something. Then it was chaos inside a small box—chairs scraping, family pressing forward, people trying to be near without violating any rule that might make someone take this away.
I got my arms around my brother for three blessed seconds.
His jumpsuit was starchy against my cheek, and he smelled like soap and the kind of clean air that isn’t quite fresh.
“I’m proud of you,” I whispered fiercely into his shoulder.
“I love you.” He nodded against my hair like the movement cost him and pulled back, eyes fixed past my shoulder.
I didn’t have to turn to know who he was looking at.
Bodie stood by the door, speaking quietly with one of the officers.
He glanced over, and for a heartbeat the noise thinned to a hum.
There was so much in his face—relief, worry, restraint so tight it made the cords in his neck stand out.
I stepped toward him, but a clerk called my name to sign something, and when I looked back, the doorway was empty. He was gone.
Of course he was. He’d come to do what he said he would. He’d kept his word and given me space. I had asked for that last night in the ugliest way possible. He’d listened.
I shoved the pen back across the table, hands shaking, and forced my way to the hall.
The busy murmur bounced off painted cinderblock.
Paperwork shuffled. Somewhere, a coffee machine gurgled.
The corridor was a funnel that spat me out toward the exit, where sunlight cut a harsh line across the linoleum.
“Of course,” my mother purred beside my ear before I made it through. “He had to make it about him.”
I stopped so abruptly the person behind me bumped my shoulder.
I turned, feeling the steadiness rise up through the soles of my feet like I’d planted roots.
Marla stood with her chin lifted and her smile back in place—that awful, pretty curve that had sliced me to ribbons more times than I could count.
“No,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake. “He made it about my brother. About what was right.”
She made a small, pitying sound. “You really going to keep pretending, Emmaline? Even now? He spoke because he needed to even the score. Because he—”
“Because he gave his word,” I snapped, and the heat that had been building behind my eyes burned clean instead of hot.
“Because he believes people can be more than their worst day. Because he knows the difference between guilt and responsibility.” My breath came faster, but not with panic.
With fury. “You don’t get to write the narration over my life anymore.
You don’t get to tell me what my grandmother meant when she wrote her will, or what my husband meant when he opened his mouth.
You don’t get to use Wesley as a cudgel and call it love. ”
Her eyes narrowed. “Watch your tone.”
“Or what? You’ll stop coming around?” I laughed, a sound that surprised me with how sharp and free it was. “Please do. Send me a change of address for your poison. I’ll make sure the post office loses it.”
Something in her face flickered and smoothed. She adjusted the cuff of her sleeve like we were at a garden party and not standing in a prison hallway while my brother waited to be led back to a cell for the last time. “You always were ungrateful.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m not blind.”
Aunt Viv’s hand appeared at my elbow, warm and solid. “Come on, baby,” she murmured. “Everybody at home’s waiting to hear.”
I nodded and let her steer me, but I didn’t break my mother’s gaze until the very last step. She blinked first.
Outside, the light made me squint. The air smelled like sun-warmed parking lot and the faintest hint of honeysuckle climbing the fence beyond. I filled my lungs and let it out slowly, as if breath would reset everything else.
Bodie had stood in a room where all my fears had been coiled like snakes and spoken with a steadiness I could trust. He’d said the word owe, and I’d heard debt instead of promise.
He’d said mistake, and I’d heard me. He’d said he would do his duty, and I hadn’t missed the part where he also promised not to let Wesley walk into the world alone.
I had work to do—apologies to make and a heart that had to learn how to trust. When I could breathe without shaking, I was going to find my husband, and I was going to tell him I’d finally heard him.