With a sob, she whirled and threw herself into Coach’s arms. He staggered back at the unexpected embrace, and when he realized she was crying, lightly patted her back. He did it awkwardly, not used to giving comfort to his students, and somehow that made it even sweeter.

“He broke up with me. He . . . he did it . . . and then . . . and then . . .” She couldn’t finish, and it didn’t matter, because Coach St. Bride understood.

His hand fell onto the crown of her head. “Oh, Catherine. I’m sorry.”

“No, I am. I am, because I was so stupid.” She wrapped her arms tighter around him. And she gradually noticed how the fine hairs on his nape were the color of Spanish gold; how his hands were large enough to hold her together. With great care, she opened her mouth and pressed it against his neck, so that he would think it was only her breath. But she could taste his skin, the salt and spice of it, and her eyes drifted shut. You were so, so right, she thought. When you find the one, you know.

May 2000

Salem Falls,

New Hampshire

Different jails smell the same.

Stale. A little bit like piss and a little bit like biscuits rising. Sweat; swabbed disinfectant. And over all this, the heady scent of anxiety. Jack shuffled beside the correctional officer, his handcuffs swinging between his wrists. I am not here, he thought dizzily. I am lying on my back on a wide, green lawn, sleeping in the sun, and this is just a nightmare. Knowing that he was about to be locked up again when he was wrongfully accused was enough to make him tremble. Who would believe the man who pleaded his second case from the confines of a cell?

“Name,” barked the recording officer. He was overweight, stuffed into his little glass booth like a dumpling in a Pyrex dish. “St. Bride,” Jack said, his voice rusty. “Dr. Jack St. Bride.”

“Height?”

“Six-two.”

“Weight?”

“One-ninety,” Jack answered.

The officer did not glance up. “Eyes?”

“Blue.”

Jack watched his answers being scrawled across the booking card. Allergies. Medications. Regular physician. Distinguishing characteristics.

Person to call in the event of an emergency.

But, Jack thought, isn’t this one?

The guard led Jack to a room the size of a large closet. It was empty, except for a desk and a row of shelves stacked with prison-issue clothing. “Strip,” he said.

At that moment, it all came back: the feeling of being a number, not a name. The absolute lack of privacy. The mindlessness that came when every decision was made for you, from when you ate to when the lights were turned off to when you were allowed to see the sky. It had taken almost no time at all to strip him of his humanity at the Farm-and it had all started the moment Jack had put on the uniform of a convict.

“I’d rather not.”

The guard looked up at him. “What?”

“I’m here in custody. I’m not a prisoner. So I shouldn’t have to dress like one.”

The correctional officer rolled his eyes. “Just get changed.”

Jack looked at the stack of orange clothing. Faded and soft, from years of others wearing it. “I can’t,” he said politely. “Please don’t ask me to do this.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m telling you, quite clearly, to take off your goddamned clothes.”

Jack glanced down at his Hanes T-shirt, his striped boxers, and a pair of sweatpants he’d bought with Addie at Kmart. He had no great attachment to this wardrobe beyond the fact that he had been wearing it the moment before Charlie Saxton arrested him.

Jack set his jaw. “The only way you’re going to get those things on me is to do it yourself.”

For a second, the guard seemed to consider this. He was larger than Jack by half a head. But something in Jack’s eyes-some bright angry nugget of resolve-made him take a step back. “Shit,” he muttered, handcuffing Jack to the desk. “Why does this happen on my shift?”

He walked out, leaving Jack alone to wonder what avalanche he’d set in motion.

Roy’s eyes were so bloodshot that he was literally seeing red. He watched with astonishment as the orange juice poured crimson into his glass, then frowned at the label and squinted. It said Tropicana. He sniffed at the insides-and realized it was tomato juice, which he’d poured into the empty juice carton last week when the glass container of V8 didn’t fit in his fridge. Relieved, he took a sip, then cracked a raw egg inside and added a dollop of whiskey.

Best hangover remedy he’d ever found, and he should know.

Behind him the door opened. Roy tried to turn fast, and nearly heaved up his insides. Addie was on the rampage, not that he would have expected any less. “I know, I know,” Roy began. “It’s completely irresponsible of me to . . . Addie?” Now that she was closer, he could see tears on her face. “Honey? What’s the matter?”

“It’s Jack. Charlie Saxton arrested him.”

“What?”

“He said . . . oh, Daddy. Charlie said Jack raped Gillian Duncan last night.”

Roy sank onto a chair. “Gillian Duncan,” he murmured. “Holy mother of God.” There was something tickling the back of his mind, but he couldn’t seem to quite reach it. Then it came to him, and he looked up. “Addie, Jack was with me last night.”

Hope broke over her face. “He was?”

“You’re not gonna want to hear it, but we were at the Rooster. Drinking.” Roy grimaced. “Still, I guess it’s a sight better to be pegged a drunk than a rapist.”

“Jack was with you last night? All last night? And you can tell the police this?”

“He showed up about ten. I can vouch for him until about eleven-thirty, I guess.”

“What happened then?”

Roy ducked his head. “I, uh, passed out. Marlon-he’s the bartender-he let me sleep it off in the back room. I guess Jack left when the bar closed.”

“Which is when?”

“Midnight.”

Addie sat down beside him on the couch, thinking. “I didn’t see him until one-thirty in the morning. Where was he?”

Roy turned away so that he would not have to see the ache in his daughter’s eyes. “Maybe they made a mistake,” he said uncomfortably, when he was really thinking, Maybe we all did.

You had to pay your dues in jail. If you wanted a candy bar, it meant behaving well enough to be granted the commissary form. If you wanted the freedom of medium security, where you could wander through the common room during any hours except lockdown, you had to prove that you could conduct yourself well in maximum security. If you wanted to run in the courtyard, you had to earn the privilege. Everything was a step, a reckoning, a inch given in the hopes of receiving one in return.

Conversely, if you made trouble, you were punished.

And so Jack, who had been in the custody of the Carroll County Jail for less than an hour, found himself being escorted between two correctional officers to the office of the superintendent for a disciplinary review.

He was a big man with no neck, a silver buzz cut, and glasses from the 1950s. In fact, Jack realized, it was entirely possible the superintendent had been sitting here, pushing papers, for half a century. “Mr. St. Bride,” the superintendent said, in a voice so feathery Jack had to strain to hear, “you’ve been charged with failing to follow the instructions of a correctional officer. Not an auspicious beginning.”

Jack looked at a spot over the man’s shoulder. There was a calendar hanging behind the desk, the kind you get free from the bank. It was turned to March 1998, as if time had stopped. “From your past history, Mr. St. Bride, I’m sure you’re aware that transgressions that occur in a correctional facility . . . even minor ones . . . can have a significant effect on the sentence you receive if convicted. For example-this little tantrum of yours could add three to seven years to the time you’ll have to serve.” The superintendent folded his arms. “Do you have anything to say in your own defense?”