Chapter 1 - ONE MINUTE WITH MY DAUGHTER
The guard dragged my chair backward just as my seven-year-old daughter reached for me.
Metal legs screamed against the pale green tile.
“One minute,” Officer Grant said. “Then this visit is over.”
I barely heard him.
After eleven months inside Grayford Correctional Center, I had learned how to ignore keys, restraints, fluorescent lights, and men who spoke to me as though my name had already been replaced by a number.
But I had never learned how to look at Salomé without breaking.
She stood on the other side of the table in a pink sweater, clutching the straps of a blue backpack that looked almost too large for her narrow shoulders.
Her brown hair had been brushed neatly.
Someone had even tied it with the yellow ribbon I used to put in her hair before school.
For one terrible second, I imagined an ordinary morning.
Cereal spilled on the counter.
Shoes missing under the couch.
My husband, Adrian, pretending he couldn’t find his keys while they sat directly in front of him.
Then reality returned.
Adrian was dead.
I had been convicted of killing him.
And my daughter was growing up without either parent.
“Mommy?”
Salomé’s voice cracked.
I leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed.
“Come here, baby.”
She ran into me.
Her arms wrapped around my shoulders, and I pressed my cheek against her hair.
I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry.
I failed instantly.
“I miss you,” she whispered.
“I miss you more.”
Behind us, Grant shifted impatiently.
He had supervised several of my visits before. He never openly violated the rules, but he always seemed eager to remind me that affection had a clock.
He took one step forward.
Before he reached us, a woman near the wall raised her hand.
Deputy Warden Isabel Méndez had attended unexpectedly that morning.
“Nobody interrupts her until she finishes speaking.”
Grant stopped.
His jaw tightened.
I noticed.
So did Méndez.
But Salomé didn’t.
She pulled away from me and wiped her face with her sleeve.
That was when I noticed the backpack.
The zipper had been repaired with bright red thread.
I knew that stitching.
My mother-in-law, Evelyn, repaired everything with red thread because her eyesight had deteriorated and darker colors were easier for her to see.
“You brought your school bag?”
Salomé looked over her shoulder.
Then back at me.
Her expression changed.
She leaned toward my ear and covered her mouth with one tiny hand.
“Mommy…”
“What?”
“Grandma hid Daddy’s phone inside my backpack.”
Every muscle in my body went still.
May you like
Adrian’s phone had never been found.
And according to the prosecution, its disappearance was one of the reasons the jury believed I had killed him.
