Freedom didn’t arrive with a sense of relief.
It arrived smelling like fuel exhaust, burnt coffee, and cold metal—the unmistakable scent of a bus station just before sunrise. It tasted like a world that had kept moving while I stood still. I walked out through the iron gates holding a transparent plastic bag that contained everything I owned: two flannel shirts, a dog-eared copy of The Count of Monte Cristo with a broken spine, and the heavy quiet you collect after three years of being told your words don’t matter.

Yet as my boots hit the fractured pavement, my thoughts weren’t on prison.
Not on the noise.
Not on the injustice.They were on one person.

My father.

Every night inside, I rebuilt him in my mind—always in the same place. Sitting in his old leather chair by the bay window, porch light casting a warm glow across the deep lines of his face. In my imagination, he was always waiting. Always alive. Holding onto the version of me that existed before the arrest, before the headlines, before the world decided Eli Vance was guilty.

I ignored the diner across the street despite the hollow ache in my stomach. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t even look at the reentry address folded in my pocket.

I went straight home.The bus dropped me three blocks away. I ran the rest, lungs burning, heart pounding like it could outrun time itself. The street looked familiar at first—the cracked sidewalks, the old maple tree sagging at the corner—but the closer I got, the more wrong it felt.

I wasn’t forgotten.

And now, the truth isn’t underground.

It’s alive.

The end.