Love or Money - Elizabeth Roderick Page 0,2
with two babies, she’d fallen in with a petty crime ring just trying to make ends meet. She’d probably been beautiful when she’d first gotten to prison, but now her beauty was long gone. She’d be released a used-up old woman, long forgotten by those she’d left behind.
Riel sighed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. Make yourself a new life. She had to try, or she’d end up like Nora, or worse.
She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, clambered down the steel ladder, and got dressed for the last time in her prison blues.
She met Marissa in the lineup, waiting to be taken to the dining hall. Marissa had worn her hair the way Riel liked it, not straightened and tamed with clips and ponytails, but allowed to be itself, standing out big and black and frizzy in a soft halo around her head. She gave Riel a sad smile as she walked up, and they clasped hands briefly when the guards weren’t looking.
“Hey, baby,” Marissa murmured with a slight smile. Her gaze moved away from Riel’s and wandered unseeingly over the heads of the other women in line. She looked like she’d been crying.
“You okay, Rissa?”
“I’m fine.”
Riel’s heart clenched.
The guards took them out across the yard to the dining hall. It had been raining for weeks, but the clouds had cleared away in the night, and it looked like it would be a sunny day. The sky was pink and orange, and the early spring air was crisp and dewy. Sheets of mist swirled around the tall pines, which rose up beyond the dully gleaming loops of razor wire. Pretty soon Riel would be on the other side of that fence with those trees, and the realization sent a searing wave of adrenaline from her scalp to her toes.
Riel and Marissa got their breakfasts and sat together at one of the cafeteria tables, where some of their friends sat with them. Marissa stirred her spoon round and round in her Cream of Wheat, her eyes dull and distant. Neither she nor Riel spoke. The other women at the table chattered, filling their silence.
“I wish I was getting out today,” a woman named Orla said with a wry grin at Riel. “I’d head straight to my favorite restaurant, get myself a huge plate of fried chicken and okra.”
“Shit, but they ain’t never gonna let you out, Orla, and it’s probably a good thing.”
They all laughed, except for Riel and Marissa.
After breakfast they headed back to their unit, Marissa still slump-shouldered and silent. Riel chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to think of something to say—the magic words that would make her girlfriend feel better, that would fix everything.
But she still hadn’t thought of anything when a guard approached the group, looking at his clipboard. “Gabriella Hernandez?”
Riel looked up, startled. “Yeah?”
“Come with me. Time to process your release.”
Riel stood, gaping. “What, already?”
The other women looked over at her.
“Bye-bye, Riel,” a girl named Lora said, rolling her eyes.
“They letting Riel out,” a woman named Beatrice said with a smile. “Watch out, world.”
Nora laughed and patted Riel on the back. “Good luck, honey. You be good out there.”
Marissa stood frozen and wide-eyed. Riel stepped toward her, tears springing to her eyes. Marissa took her hand and quickly squeezed it once, smiling stiffly. “Go on, baby,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Riel said, tears spilling over.
She turned and followed the guard, looking back once as they headed toward administration. Her last glimpse of Marissa was of her girlfriend hiding her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
Chapter Two
Riel had to sign a mound of paperwork, and her tears kept splotching the ink.
“You’re not going to miss us that much, are you?” the woman at the desk drawled.
Riel didn’t respond, sniffing and drying her tears on her wrist.
The woman rolled her eyes and slid a piece of paper over the counter. “This is the information regarding your probation office. You have to report there at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, or they’ll put a bench warrant out for you. So if you miss us that much, you can just come right back.”
Riel stared at the sheet of paper blankly. Some women did just that: came right back, especially the ones with girlfriends. As a newly released prisoner, Riel wouldn’t be allowed to visit or even write to Marissa. They’d made plans to meet up again when Marissa got out, but the realization, which Riel had