The Hero's Redemption

He talked about his shock and disbelief, about the moment he’d been led out of the courthouse in shackles, about the sentencing and hearing the words ten years.

“Did your father support you at all?”

“He came to the courthouse to watch the trial. But when I turned around to look at him after the foreman said, ‘Guilty as charged,’ I could tell he thought I was guilty, too. He walked out looking disgusted. A week later, he wrote a letter saying I was no son of his and that my mother would have been ashamed of me.”

“How could he?” she said fiercely.

His eyes met hers, so vividly blue she couldn’t look away, and he said, “The road I was on, I might’ve gotten to the point where I’d have shot someone for a hundred bucks to buy a snort of coke. I can’t say that’s impossible.”

“It is.” Erin held out her hand in a demand he recognized. Once she had a firm grip on him, she said, “That’s not the man you are. I can’t imagine you hurting anyone on purpose.”

He shed a few more tears, embarrassed but not trying to hide his face this time. Apparently, he could tell she was winding down, because he made her push that button for more drugs.

She said, “You know who did kill that boy.”

Funny, he thought, because he’d been a boy, too, although of course he hadn’t seen himself that way.

“Yeah, only one of my friends—” irony filled his voice “—was built like me. That day at the range, I used his gun. He had a cloth in his hand when he took it from me and holstered it. The surveillance tape at the store showed the shooter wearing gloves.”

“Did you tell anybody?”

“You mean, did I finger him? Sure I did. I told the cops and my attorney. I didn’t owe him anything after he set me up.”

“But they had your fingerprints, so they were satisfied.”

He inclined his head.

Drowsiness felt like warm waves lapping at her.

He could obviously tell, because he kissed her cheek and freed her hand. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve done one more thing for me.”

The warm, contented feeling vanished as if someone had opened a freezer door beside the bed.

He was ready to say goodbye. He was grateful for her faith in him, which was good—except for the fact that now he had to swallow one more indigestible lump of gratitude. He was right that they couldn’t build anything on that as a foundation.

So she tried for a smile and said, “Thank you for coming. I’ll probably be out of here by tomorrow, and I know you have to work, so…” She let her voice trail off. “Anyway, I’m glad things are going so well for you. And hey, if Edgar Allan Poe is on that list, give him a try. You’ll like his stuff.”

He rose to his feet, but not as if he was eager to escape. “How about you?”

She held on to the smile, although her lips trembled, and said, “I guess I need to find a life, the same way you have.”

They both heard the approaching footsteps. A nurse pushed aside the curtain. Cole looked at Erin for another long minute, nodded and left.

* * *

THE NEXT DAY, he had a little trouble keeping his mind on the job. The others gave him a hard time about being slow on the uptake, but in a friendly way.

He kept thinking, I shouldn’t have left. Had she wanted him to go? Cole honestly didn’t know. He hated the idea of her being uncomfortable with him, though, which meant he couldn’t ignore her when she sent a clear signal.

During the night, he’d briefly questioned whether she really believed in his innocence, or whether it was an act. Make Cole feel good about himself, which was in line with her determination to help him succeed. And yet… Some people might call him naive, but he knew she wasn’t pretending. Her astonishment was so open, as was her anger at his father and everyone else who’d been idiotic enough to think Cole could do something so awful.

God, it had felt good. Even here at work, every so often he’d realize he was grinning like a fool for no apparent reason. Erin believed in him. No one else in the world had, except maybe Dani—and that was a big maybe—but Erin did.

He made the decision to stop at the hospital to be sure they weren’t keeping her another night. The woman behind the counter checked; the computer showed that Erin Parrish had been discharged.