“Different men were coming in and out of the apartment.”
“Sometimes we slept at shelters.”
“Sometimes we didn't.”
He took a breath.
“Mrs. Thompson used to sit beside me at lunch.”
“She'd open her bag and say she packed too much.”
“Half a sandwich.”
“Apple.”
“Sometimes cookies.”
Elijah almost smiled.
“She did it every day for months.”
Briggs said nothing.
“She got me a coat.”
“Never admitted it was her.”
“Put school supplies in my desk before class.”
“She was the first adult who ever helped me without making sure everybody saw.”
His voice broke.
“One day she told me that whatever happened in my life, I needed to remember I was worth something.”
Elijah looked at the clock.
Eleven thirty-seven.
“I didn't always remember.”
“But I never forgot she said it.”
Briggs lowered his eyes.
Elijah continued.
“I don't want her to defend me.”
“I don't want her to forgive me for anything.”
“I just want her to know those words stayed.”
The captain looked toward the witness room.
Then back at Elijah.
“You understand who Mrs. Thompson is?”
Elijah’s eyes closed.
“Yes.”
Briggs did not need to say it.
Everyone in the prison knew.
Ruth Thompson had not only taught Elijah in fifth grade.
She was the mother of Samuel Thompson.
The security guard Elijah had been convicted of murdering.
Elijah whispered:
“I know exactly who she is.”
Briggs looked genuinely unsettled now.
“You want the victim’s mother brought into the execution chamber so you can thank her for feeding you when you were a child?”
“Yes.”
A correctional lieutenant near the wall stared at the floor.
Elijah added:
“If she says no, don't bother her again.”
Briggs checked the clock.
Eleven thirty-eight.
Then he looked toward another officer.
“Find the warden.”
Ruth Thompson was asleep when the telephone rang.
At seventy-three, sleep had become something she negotiated with rather than received.
Some nights came easily.
Others carried old voices.
Her husband asking whether she remembered locking the back door.
Students calling her name from a hallway that no longer existed.
Samuel laughing in the kitchen.
Samuel was always twenty-nine in her dreams.
Never thirty.
He never got to become thirty.
The phone rang again.
Ruth opened her eyes.
The red digits beside her bed read 11:39.
She almost let it ring.
Then she saw the number.
State correctional system.
Her chest tightened.
She answered.
“Hello?”
A woman spoke gently.
“Mrs. Ruth Thompson?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Deputy Warden Elaine Porter from Stone Ridge State Penitentiary.”
Ruth sat up.
She already knew.
The execution.
Every newspaper had mentioned it.
The television had shown Elijah’s face that evening.
She turned the television off before the anchor finished the first sentence.
For twelve years, Ruth had avoided saying his name whenever possible.
That had required discipline because she had once said it hundreds of times.
Elijah, open your book.
Elijah, stop talking.
Elijah, come sit down.
Elijah, take another sandwich.
Elijah, look at me.
Elijah, you are worth something.
Now the state called her eleven minutes before killing him.
Ruth’s mouth went dry.
“What happened?”
The deputy warden hesitated.
“He has made a final request.”
Ruth looked toward the dark hallway outside her bedroom.
“What does that have to do with me?”
“He requested to see you.”
Ruth closed her eyes.