That was what the newspaper said.
That was what the court record said.
It was not the full truth.
But it was enough to define me.
My boyfriend at the time, Cole Harris, had robbed a pharmacy.
I had driven the car.
I knew he planned to steal pills.
I did not know he had a gun.
That distinction mattered to me.
It did not matter much in court.
Someone got hurt.
Nobody died.
But a clerk suffered a serious injury when Cole struck him.
Cole took a deal.
He testified that I knew everything.
I did not have money for a good attorney.
My public defender tried.
It was not enough.
I received fourteen years.
I served eleven.
I spent the first three years angry.
The next three blaming Cole.
Then blaming my family.
Then myself.
Eventually, there was nothing left to blame.
Only time.
My daughter, Lily, had been six when I entered prison.
She was seventeen when I got out.
For the first two years, my mother brought her to visit.
Then the visits became less frequent.
Then they stopped.
Letters came back unopened.
Phone calls went unanswered.
Eventually, my mother sent one letter.
Only one.
Rebecca,
Lily needs stability.
Please stop confusing her.
That was it.
No love.
No explanation.
I wrote anyway.
Birthdays.
Christmas.
First day of school.
Anything I could imagine.
I never knew which letters reached her.
Maybe none.
Maybe all.
Prison teaches you how to live without answers.
So on release day, the first thing I did was take a bus toward Cedar Valley.
That was where I had grown up.
That was where my mother lived.
At least that was what I believed.
I imagined knocking on the old front door.
I imagined my mother opening it.
I imagined her being angry.
Cold.
Maybe ashamed.
But somewhere underneath all of those possibilities, I still imagined being allowed inside.
I imagined sleeping in my old room.
Just one night.
I imagined finding Lily.
I knew she might hate me.
I knew she might not want to see me.
But I needed to try.
The bus dropped me near the county highway.
From there, I walked.
Almost six miles.
By the time I reached the old house, my shoes had rubbed my heels raw.
Then I found strangers living there.
A new family.
New curtains.
A bicycle in the yard.
Plastic toys on the porch.
