June 14th. Thursday. Eight thirty in the morning. I stood outside the Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania with the early summer sun making the concrete bright and my hands slightly unsteady even though I'd been preparing for this day for three years. He was being released at nine. I'd driven the three hours from Brooklyn in the dark, arriving at seven because I couldn't risk being late. Couldn't risk him walking out those gates and not seeing me immediately. Couldn't risk the first moment of his freedom being uncertainty about whether I'd actually come. I'd come. Other people were waiting too. Families. Partners. A few lawyers. We stood in a loose cluster near the visitor parking lot, all of us watching the main entrance, all of us carrying the same tension of people waiting for something they've been promised but don't fully trust will arrive. At eight fifty-seven, the door opened. He walked out alone. Wearing jeans and a gray t-shirt and carrying a clear plastic
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