Chapter 1 - The Boy at the Gate
“Dad?”
Jake Carter kept walking.
The prison gate had just slammed shut behind him, and after four years of hearing steel doors close, he could not make himself turn around. He carried everything he owned in a clear plastic bag: two shirts, a paperback Bible from the prison library, forty-three dollars, and a bus voucher to a halfway house in town.
Then the small voice came again.
“Dad... it’s me.”
Jake stopped so hard his shoe scraped the pavement.
Across the road, beside a crooked bus-stop sign, stood a skinny boy in a red hoodie. His hair was too long. His sneakers were split near the toes. Both hands were wrapped around a sandwich inside a wrinkled plastic bag.
Jake stared.
Four years ago, his son had been four. Round cheeks. Missing front tooth. Arms always reaching up.
This boy was eight.
But the eyes were the same.
“Ben?” Jake whispered.
The boy’s mouth shook before he smiled.
Jake dropped the plastic bag.
Ben ran.
Jake fell to his knees on the sidewalk and caught him so hard the breath left both of them. Ben buried his face in Jake’s shoulder.
“You got tall,” Jake said, and his voice broke on the last word.
“You got old.”
Jake laughed once, then cried.
Ben pulled back and held out the sandwich.
“I brought you lunch.”
Jake looked at it. “You made this?”
“Peanut butter and jelly. I remembered.”
Jake had made Ben the same sandwich every Friday before prison. He used to cut it diagonally because Ben said triangles tasted better.
The one in the bag was smashed almost flat.
It was also cut into two triangles.
Jake pressed his lips together.
“How did you know I was getting out today?”
Ben looked at the ground.
“I didn’t.”
Jake frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been coming every morning.”
“How many mornings?”
Ben counted silently on his fingers.
“Eleven.”
Jake’s stomach tightened.
“Ben, where’s your mom?”
The boy stopped smiling.
A truck rumbled past. Somewhere behind them, a guard shouted to another guard. The whole world kept moving while Jake watched his son’s face change.
“Dad,” Ben whispered, “Mom’s gone.”
Jake felt the pavement tilt under his knees.
“What?”
Ben swallowed.
“She died last winter.”
Jake could not breathe.
Before he could ask another question, a black pickup screeched to the curb.
A man jumped out and pointed straight at Ben.
“Get in the truck. Now.”
Ben grabbed Jake’s sleeve with both hands.
And Jake recognized the man.
May you like
Todd Mercer.
His dead wife’s brother.
