Free None So Blind by Barbara Fradkin

incarceration will not make it any easier. I want to learn to use the Internet for teaching, to manage my chair in public, and face the outside world from this chair, with these scars and this baggage, while I still have good people to support me.”
    Anjou pursed his lips, looking unconvinced. At his side, the other board member, who until then had merely jotted notes, leaned forward. “You’ve given us a lot of reasons why you’d like to be released, Mr. Rosten. But why should you be released?”
    A classic question and one Rosten had clearly been coached in. He leaned forward intently in his chair. “In prison, I saw the difference that basic literacy and a high school diploma can make to the futures of men who never had the chance earlier in their lives. If we teach them to read and write, maybe they won’t end up back in here or on the streets. It’s taken me a long time to stop feeling sorry for myself. My life is not over. There is still some good I can do, and I’d like that chance to make amends. I have walked both sides of the street and that gives me a unique qualification to lend a helping hand to others.”
    Damn it , Green thought as he sat back in frustration. Clever bastard. Nowhere in his carefully crafted appeal was there an actual, unequivocal admission of guilt. He had left that to his parole officer. Whether the board members noticed that subtlety, they did not dwell on the issue, choosing instead to ask about the logistics of Rosten’s release plan and his ongoing medical needs.
    Finally, Pierre Anjou thanked him and flipped back through the file. “As I said at the outset, the victim’s family has declined to read their statement at this hearing, but requested that it be read out at the close of the hearing. Here then is the submission made by Mrs. Marilyn Carmichael, mother of Jacqueline Carmichael, the victim.”
    Anjou selected a single page from the pile and adjusted his glasses. For a long moment he peered over the rims at Marilyn, and then began to read. “When I gave a statement at James Rosten’s sentencing, I tried to describe how Jacqueline’s murder changed my family’s lives. In many ways, ruined our lives. Twenty years later, nothing has changed. The murder took away the warm, vibrant young woman we all loved, made our world a brutal, terrifying place, and destroyed our trust in laws, justice, and basic human goodness. My husband went to his grave recently a broken man, and my remaining two children have left the country and become estranged from me in their effort to run away from the memories.
    “I need to pick up the pieces and build a new life. Jackie was a loving, generous girl, and it is her spirit that I must keep alive. Not bitterness, pain, and emptiness. James Rosten has spent the prime years of his life behind bars and he has lost everything including his health in payment for this crime.
    “I believe it is time for him too to make what he can of the life he has ahead, and so for my sake and his, I support his release on parole.”

Chapter Five
    “I think it’s bullshit.”
    Hannah spoke with the cocky assurance that is the hallmark of the young. Before all life’s puzzles and contradictions have a chance to confound her , Green thought wryly. He held his tongue, which prompted Hannah to roll her eyes.
    “I mean, come on, Dad. Amnesia? How lame is that?”
    “It happens,” Sharon said. She was perched on the edge of her chair, her own dinner neglected while she attempted to wrestle a spoon away from Aviva. When the baby screeched, she abandoned the effort and picked up a second spoon. The floor around Aviva’s high chair already looked like the morning after a street party, but the dog was happily stationed underneath doing cleanup duty.
    It was Shabbat, but Sharon had abandoned much of the ritual of the Friday night dinner since the baby’s arrival on the scene. They had retreated to the cramped but scrubbable kitchen and the silver candlesticks were