“If you mention my name again, I promise you’ll be going straight back to prison.”
My sister Monica said it standing in the front yard of the house I used to own. Then she threw a white envelope at my feet. It hit the grass and split open a little. I could see a fat stack of hundred-dollar bills inside.
I’d been out of prison for nineteen days.
I still jumped every time a door slammed. I still woke up at 5:30 every morning waiting for a guard to call count. And now here was my little sister, in her cream-colored trench coat and her expensive sunglasses, threatening me in the yard of a house on Brand Road in Dublin, Ohio, that I’d paid for with my own money.
Behind her, a real estate sign was stuck in the lawn.
FOR SALE. Coldwell Banker. Call Jennifer.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was her left wrist.
She was wearing Dad’s watch.
A gold Hamilton with a cracked leather band. My father wore it every day for thirty-one years at the Honda plant in Marysville. He gave it to me in his hospital bed three days before he died. “You’re the one who’ll keep it running, Becca,” he’d said.
The last time I saw that watch, it was in my jewelry box on my dresser. Upstairs. In that house.
“Pick up your money,” I said. My voice was steady. I don’t know how. “You already took four years of my life, Monica. You’re not buying the ones I’ve got left.”
My sister smiled.
It was the same smile she had when we were kids and she broke something and blamed it on me. And Mom always believed her.
“You still think you can win,” she said.
Then she got into her white Lexus and drove away. And left me standing in the yard with an envelope full of money lying at my feet in the grass.
I didn’t pick it up.
My name is Rebecca Hale. I’m thirty-six years old. And I served three years and ten months of a five-year sentence for a fraud I never committed.
To understand how I ended up in that yard, I have to take you back to the morning I walked out of the Ohio Reformatory for Women.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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