“Who else was drinking?”
He frowned. “There might have been some old lady. Sorry. That’s all I got. It’s like the whole night was a blur. You ever have an operation?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Well, when I was little, I had a belly button hernia. They had to put me under because I was little, right? I remember being wheeled into the operating room and then, bam—nothing. That’s how that night was for me.”
She treaded very carefully. “I heard something about you. From a childhood friend of yours named Emma.”
Fear swept across his face, and he looked around as if someone might be listening.
“I won’t tell,” she said, reassuring him.
“I never did, not even while they were beating me. I figured itwouldn’t make a difference—besides to make my life a lot harder in a place like this.”
She nodded. “It’s one of the few virtues of death row. You aren’t in general population. But then, it depends on the prison.” She waited for a moment. “It probably doesn’t matter, like you said. They never claimed it was a sex crime—though it was implied. And you saying it now would just seem like last-minute bullshit.”
He exhaled, relieved. At least he had something private, a secret about him no one else knew, to take to his grave. He only wished he’d had time to act on it. He never would get to experience adult love, he thought.
Ruby looked at her watch. It was barely past sunrise, but she had a lot to do today.
“Will you be here, for the execution?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“Terrence—that attorney—he said he’d come, too. Do you think her family will be here?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t like it that they still blame me. Like I will be gone, and years from now, they will think of my name and think I killed her.” Tears had welled up in his eyes, and in a way she was happy to see them, because it meant he was still alive, but she was pained, too, because it meant he was not ready to die. He would face a hard death.
“Sometimes people are exonerated after the fact,” she said, her heart aching.
“Like Emmett Till,” he said.
“And others.”
“They keep a running list in here,” he said. “But mostly of men who got out.” He halted. “There aren’t many.”
“No.” She never lied. She never held out false hope. “There aren’t.”
“You always hope something like that will happen,” he said. “But when you’re in a place like this, what really happens is nothing. That’s how they kill you. By doing nothing.”
“I wish I could stay,” she said, softly. “But I still have some things to check out. I will work to the end.”
“Yeah. Well—if I don’t see you before, I’ll see you then,” he said.
She rose. Then she turned.
“There’s one more thing,” she said. “I keep thinking of cracked windows. You know, like when you roll down your car window for air. Why would that be?”
He looked genuinely confused.
“I have no idea.”
“That’s the license plate number we need,” Ruby told Terrence, pointing at the picture of the brown Datsun.
They were at his desk, which was in the middle of a swarm of activity. The walls were pocked with law degrees, the desks were communal, the industrial carpet was stained with spilled coffee. But his legal team was filled with energy. They were jumping through all the hoops that came before every execution: the last-minute motions, the hopeless petitions, the never-successful pleas.
