Chapter 19 - The First Night Home
Jake waited until after dinner to open Rachel’s envelope.
The apartment above Ray’s garage was small.
Two bedrooms. One bathroom. A kitchen table that wobbled unless you folded a piece of cardboard under one leg.
Ben loved it immediately.
“My room has a window.”
“Most rooms do.”
“Not Uncle Todd’s back room.”
Jake stopped unpacking.
He wanted to ask a dozen questions.
Instead he said, “This one opens. And it has a screen. And you’re allowed to hang exactly three ridiculous posters.”
“Five.”
“Four.”
“Deal.”
After macaroni and cheese, they sat at the kitchen table.
Jake opened the envelope.
Rachel’s handwriting filled both sides of a yellow page.
Ben,
If you are reading this with your dad, then something I hoped for has happened.
Jake stopped.
Ben whispered, “Keep going.”
Rachel wrote that she knew life might not happen the way any of them planned. She told Ben never to confuse someone’s worst mistake with their entire life. She told Jake that coming home was not one day at a prison gate; it was a choice made every morning.
Then came the sentence that broke both of them.
And if you two ever eat peanut butter and jelly together again, cut mine into triangles too, because Ben is right: they taste better.
Ben laughed while crying.
Jake covered his eyes.
For a while, they sat quietly.
Then Ben pushed his chair back.
“I have something.”
He ran to his backpack and returned with a crushed plastic sandwich bag.
Inside was the wrapper from the sandwich he had carried to the prison.
“You kept that?”
Ben nodded.
“It was the first thing I gave you when you came home.”
Jake took the wrinkled bag carefully.
“I dropped it.”
“You were crying.”
“I was not.”
“You were crying a lot.”
Jake smiled. “Maybe a little.”
Ben leaned against him.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Were you scared when you got out?”
Jake looked around the tiny apartment.
“Terrified.”
“Why?”
“Because prison tells you exactly where to stand, when to eat, when to sleep. Then one day a door opens and everybody expects you to know how to live.”
Ben thought about that.
“I can tell you when breakfast is.”
Jake laughed.
“Good. I need help.”
At bedtime, Jake left Ben’s door open.
Ben called from the dark.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
“You don’t have to stand outside.”
Jake leaned against the doorframe.
“What?”
“You can come in.”
Jake sat beside him until he fell asleep.
On the kitchen counter, Rachel’s letter rested beside the old sandwich bag.
And beneath it was a final note Jake had not noticed.
May you like
One line.
Jake, tomorrow morning, make him lunch.
