Rachel Lee - Cornered In Conard County

He’d been given the address of a halfway house, so he went there, arriving late at night, and resigned himself to spending some time figuring out how to get his hands on some money quickly. He sure as hell didn’t intend to work any of the low-paying menial jobs they probably would point him to. He had bigger things to hunt.

Even though it was late, with his release papers he got inside the door. They showed him to a bedroom and didn’t seem particularly worried that he asked to use a computer. The residents had one in a public room downstairs. Help himself.

So he did. He was too keyed up to just go to sleep. He’d dozed on the bus anyway. The only thing about this that shocked him was his surprising discomfort at not being surrounded by walls when he’d walked from the bus to this place. Not having his every movement watched or directed.

He’d never imagined the world could feel so big, and he suspected that once tomorrow began and life resumed out there, it was going to overwhelm him with chaos. He wasn’t used to chaos anymore. The order of his days had become deeply embedded over twenty-five years.

But so had sitting at a computer and hunting for information about his sister. She had vanished from the town where she had grown up. She was reputed to be a partner in a graphics business that had no address other than a web URL and email. The godparents who had raised her were dead.

He needed to know more about her than this, but he suspected if he called people around here in their old hometown he’d meet a brick wall. Well, unless he could somehow convince them he was someone else. Not likely. He feared too many local people might remember him. Maybe not young people, but the older ones who had probably devoured all the lurid details in the newspaper and on the evening news.

With that thought in mind, he headed upstairs to his room, where his bed was ready to be made. His own room. It had been a while. Not big, but bigger than a cell, without a cell mate.

For a little while the space bothered him, but then he settled down. Room was a good thing. If he thought back very hard to his early days in the slammer, he remembered how claustrophobic he had felt. No more of that.

Now there was infinite freedom.

He needed to remember how to enjoy it. To use it.

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