Free What He Promises by Hannah Ford Page A

slipping
past my lips before I could stop them.
    “I don’t know if I have more to give,” he said
softly.
    I opened my mouth to speak.  
    But then I realized there was nothing left to
say.
    I couldn’t believe that after all of this,
after all of the strides we’d made, how close I’d felt to him, that we were
right back here, in the exact same place we always ended up.
    I got up and walked out.
    He didn’t try to stop me.

 
    ***

 
    I kept walking.
    I walked and walked and walked, turning down
random streets and weaving my way through the city.
    I had no idea where I was going.
    I walked for two hours.
    Noah didn’t try to call me, didn’t try to text
me.
    I didn’t cry, or feel anger toward him.
    All I felt was numb.
    I was on the subway to the Bronx before I
realized where exactly , it was I was going .  
    I needed to go and see him.
    I needed to go and see Professor
Worthington.  
    I needed some answers.

 
    ***

 
    The jail was surprisingly easy to get
into.   I’d heard horror stories
about people not being allowed in, about families being turned away at gates by
surly guards while children cried and begged to see their mothers or fathers.
    I was lucky enough to have shown up during
visiting hours, even luckier that I’d been added to Professor Worthington’s
visitor list.   He’d listed me as his
lawyer, which was probably the only reason I’d even
been allowed to be added, but I wasn’t going to ask questions.
    A uniformed officer led me into a tiny holding
room, with a partition of glass that separated the prisoners from their visitors.   The room was private, with only one
chair.
    It was disconcerting.
    I’d been expecting lots of other people to be
here talking to their loved ones, had been hoping for soft voices that drifted
through the room and blunted the force of whatever it was that was about to
happen.
    I wanted to ask if there was another room, a
busier one, but I didn’t want to give away the fact that I might not really be Professor
Worthington’s lawyer.   After all,
wouldn’t a lawyer welcome the chance to be alone with her client? I couldn’t
risk getting kicked out.
    I sat down on my side of the partition and
pulled a tiny notebook out of my bag, set my cell phone down on the ledge in
front of me.   They hadn’t taken it
from me, which I’d found odd, but perhaps they didn’t
do that for lawyers.
    The room was hot, muggy, the air heavy.   I could feel a tiny bit of sweat
starting at the curve of my back.
    It seemed to take forever for them to bring him
in.
    When he finally appeared he
was flanked by two guards, handcuffed, and wearing a dull grey prison jumpsuit .
    His hair had been freshly washed, but his face
was drawn.   A huge bandage covered
one of his eyes.
    He sat down across from me, and the guards left
the room, the heavy door shutting with an audible click behind them.   I resisted the urge to scream after
them, to insist they come back and protect me.
    From what, I wasn’t sure.   There was a plexi glass partition between me and the professor, and a
camera attached to the ceiling blinked a red light, alerting us to the fact
that someone was always watching.
    It’s just practice , I told myself.   If you’re going to be a defense
lawyer someday, you’re going to have to get used to coming to prison and
talking to your clients.  
    “Charlotte,” the professor said, and the sound
of his voice filled me with the urge to wretch.
    “Professor,” I said, nodding.
    He smiled.   “I knew you’d come.”
    “I find that hard to believe.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I myself didn’t know I was coming
until just a few minutes ago.”
    He shook his head.   “You were always going to come.   Even before you got my letters, you were
going to come.”
    My hands balled in fists at my side, and I
reminded myself I wasn’t here to get into a discussion about my motives for
coming to see him, or about whether or not he had some sixth sense about what