10 years later
Nancy sits in the visitation area of the Logan Correctional Center. Around her, other women, all wearing the same prison-issued jumpsuits, wait for their family members. Husbands enter and hug their wives. Sons and daughters come in and either embrace their mothers or sit down in a huff, glaring at the women.
Nancy knows some of the women. Others are just faces in the halls of the prison. Some of them are nice; others are mean. Some are tough and scary, and others cry at night, weeping for what they’ve lost.
Nancy keeps craning her head toward the entrance. She is especially anxious today. She always expects him to look younger than he is, as if time will have stopped on the outside world while she’s been locked away. She expects an eight-year-old boy to run and leap into her arms like she’s just been away for the weekend. But then the real Benji strides in—a man now, no longer a boy—wearing a button-down shirt and tie. Today, he holds a black square object in his hand and grins sheepishly.
Nancy’s mouth bursts into a wide, uncontrollable smile. Tears pool in her eyes.
“I did it, Mom,” Ben says, holding out the object.
It’s the cap from his graduation regalia, complete with a yellow tassel marked with the words Class of ’97.
She throws her arms around his neck and grips him in a tight hug.
“I’m proud of you,” she says, unable to keep herself from crying. “I wish I could have been there.”
“Me too,” he says, and begins to cry too.
A guard walks toward their table and tells them to separate. Wiping her eyes, Nancy sits. Ben does too. She wants to hold his hand, but that is against the rules also. It’s hard to sit this close to him and not touch him, but she’ll try to sneak another hug before he leaves.
Ben tells her about the graduation ceremony, which fills her with joy and sadness. She wants to hear all about it, but hearing him speak of the ceremony—a milestone event in his life that she couldn’t be there for—is also like pressing on a bruise that never heals.
She’s been locked up for ten years, and still the frustration over her powerlessness never ebbs, never weakens. She can’t be there for her son and can’t imagine a more painful way to live her day-to-day life.
Inevitably, as it does every time Ben visits, their conversation turns to the status of her appeals. Her lawyer is getting ready to file the papers, she says.
Nancy was sentenced to life in prison for murder, with another thirty years tacked on for aggravated kidnapping. In short, she is supposed to spend the rest of her life behind bars, without the possibility of parole. If she can’t overturn her conviction, she will die in prison of old age.
It could have been worse. Because the murder was committed during the act of a felony, the crime qualified for the death penalty. That’s the sentence Danny Edwards received.
There is a rumor going around that the state plans to abolish the death penalty, which would commute Danny’s sentence to life in prison without parole, essentially the same as Nancy’s.
But Nancy is confident that her appeal will overturn her conviction.
It has to. She’s already missed her son’s childhood. She doesn’t want to miss the rest of his life.
“I promise you,” Nancy says, reaching out and breaking the rules by grabbing his hand, “I will spend however long it takes to get out of here. I will come home to you.”
Ben takes this cue to hug her. When a security guard heads their way, they split up and Ben heads for the door, holding his graduation cap at his side.
Tears streak Nancy’s cheeks.
As she heads back to her cell, she thinks about what landed her here. Not the murder of Stephen Small, but what she is actually guilty of—blindly loving the wrong man.
She thinks about Danny and wonders where he is. She imagines him sitting in a cell, thinking somehow that he is a victim in all this. It wasn’t fair he couldn’t make ends meet. It wasn’t fair other people had so much money. It wasn’t fair that Stephen Small died from asphyxiation when Danny never actually wanted to hurt him. Danny always blamed everyone else.
She wonders if Danny feels any guilt for the lives he destroyed. Not just those of Stephen Small and his family.
But her life too.
She settles back into her cell and sits down on the bunk. Her cell is similar to the first one she was locked in all those years ago: metal toilet, metal sink, cinder-block walls. It makes her long for the leaking dishwasher and chipped paint of her old town house.
The cell also has a small desk in the corner, and taped above it are pictures that Ben has sent her over the years. She missed his first day of middle school, his first day of high school. She wasn’t there for him when he was getting ready for prom. She didn’t help him study for his SATs. She won’t be there to see him off to college.
So much has been taken from her.
It isn’t fair, she thinks.
Then she stops herself and wonders for a moment if she is just like Danny, putting all the blame on someone else.
She knew Danny was up to something. She didn’t know it was kidnapping. She didn’t know it was murder. But she knew something bad was happening, and she went along with it. She wasn’t just ignorant of what happened. She chose ignorance despite warning sign after warning sign.
A man died.
A wife lost her husband.
Three boys lost their father.
Could she have stopped this from happening if she’d done anything differently? Could she have at least protected herself and her son by getting as far away from Danny as possible?
What could she have done differently?
She lies down on her bunk and stares at the ceiling, thinking.
She won’t come to any answers today, nor anytime soon. As she looks around her prison cell, she knows there will be plenty of time to ponder these questions.
Finally honest with herself, Nancy Rish knows she will be in prison for a long, long time.