Smiling.

Jesse Boyd was a free man, out of jail, with his whole life to live. His wildest dreams had come true-he'd beaten the odds. When the lawyer had shown up at the prison to tell him he'd won his appeal hearing, he'd almost fallen over. He'd walked like a zombie through the prison discharge procedures, barely hearing the words or seeing the faces, scrawling his name over and over to a dozen different forms.

Then, donning the old clothes he'd been wearing at his original trial and clutching his few possessions, he'd walked out of that place for good. He hadn't spared a glance at anyone, not a single good-bye, silently wishing them all nothing but misery for what they'd done to him.

He was free to do anything, to go anywhere.

Only, he had nowhere to go. They had given him some money, barely enough to survive for a week or two. He'd used some of it to pay for a cheap hotel room the previous night, needing a little time to adjust to the strange sensation of freedom. But he couldn't stay longer, not when he didn't know how long he had to make his money last.

He'd asked his lawyer why he couldn't sue for wrongful imprisonment, win a million bucks like some other cons he'd heard about. She'd said he'd have had to actually be exonerated, not just had his conviction overturned. Greedy bastards. They got to fuck him over and he got 580 bucks and a pair of sneakers.

Jesse had been sure he could go back to his ma's house, which was where he'd headed Friday, after taking a bus down to Baltimore. Throughout the trip, he pictured their reunion. When she saw him at the door to her duplex in the old Dundalk neighborhood and learned he'd been freed, she'd know he was innocent for sure. She would welcome Jesse home by drawing him into her big arms and pulling him into the kitchen for a bowl of her famous crab soup. Her pudgy face would grow wet with tears of happiness. Then she'd lead him to his old room, kept just the way it had been while he was growing up.

But it hadn't worked out that way. She'd opened the door all right. Then she'd shrieked a little, made the sign of the cross, and slammed it closed in his face.

He'd knocked for five minutes, pleaded through the door that he was free, he hadn't broken out of jail, and she ought to turn on the news if she didn't believe him. She'd apparently called a neighbor instead. Because that fat fuck Mr. Watson from the other side of the duplex stepped outside onto the porch, butting his nose in where it didn't belong, like always.

"She don't want to see you, son," he said.

"I'm out," Jesse insisted. "They let me go. It's not like I escaped or anything. But she won't listen to me."

The front door finally opened. His mother peeked around the edge of it, smiling in relieved appreciation when she saw Mr. Watson. The man stepped back into his own doorway, but didn't close it, remaining right there in plain sight. Then Ma glanced somewhere behind the still mostly closed door and said something to another person who had to be in the tiny living room. "Just hush, now, it's okay. I'll step outside and be right back."

"Who you got in there?" Jesse asked, knowing his seventy-year-old mother would never be with a man. Then a curtain shifted in the front window, and he saw a kid's face peer out.

He tensed, a familiar sensation crawling up his body, from his toes all the way up his legs and throughout the rest of him. His mouth went dry, his throat tight. A buzzing started in his ears, as if a fly had gotten inside his skull and was whooshing around, trying to find a way out.

"Who's the boy?" he whispered.

"I'm babysittin' him." She planted herself in front of the door, crossed her arms over her big chest. "And you ain't comin' in."

How crazy was that? She didn't trust him around some neighborhood kid.

Such a cute little neighborhood kid.

He swallowed, wondering why he felt dizzy. Why he always felt this way when he saw some bright-faced boy, all grins and big teeth.

Seeing how closely she watched him, he forced himself to stand up straight and not let his eyes shift to peek at the window again. "Ma, they let me go. You gotta let me in," he said. He turned his back to Watson, who stood so close, probably able to hear every word. He acted as if he needed to be a bodyguard, protecting Jesse's mother from her only son.

"I know what you are. I know what you have always been. And you've set foot in my house for the very last time."

Shock made his jaw fall open. That was ugly, what he saw in her eyes. It looked like disgust. Maybe even close to hatred.

"But they let me go," he said weakly.

"Not 'cause you didn't do it, though." She stepped closer, until he could see the way the wrinkles had deepened in her face and the dark circles had imprinted themselves under her sunken eyes. She'd aged a lot more than two years. Lowering her voice, to keep Mr. Watson from hearing, she snarled, "Because you did do it. I don't care what they say on the TV, what the lawyers say-I know you and I know you're guilty."

Jesse started to cry, sniffling as though he were some damn little kid who'd been caught out doing something dirty. "No, Ma. No, I got a bum rush. It wasn't fair."

She lifted her hand and shook one quivering index finger in his face. "Don't say nothing more. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to see your face. Whoever let you out of that jail was crazy, because I know you ain't gonna be able to last long without hurting somebody again."

"I didn't hurt him!" he insisted, hearing the whine in his own voice. But it was true. He hadn't hurt him enough to kill him, at least, not on purpose.

That had been an accident. Just an accident. He wasn't a killer-he'd never murder anybody. Who could be blamed for an accident?

She stepped back inside for a moment, and when she came back out, she was holding a small plastic bag, thick with folded bills. She shoved it toward him. "Your money, all you had in your room and your account before you got picked up. I held on to it for you. Plus I put in every dollar I had in my purse. Now, get gone, boy. Just get gone. I'll keep praying for you-just like I pray for that little boy you killed. But prayers are all you're getting from me."

She slipped back into the house without another word, shutting the door again, slamming the bolts home, leaving him standing there on the porch. Alone. Rejected. Homeless. And completely loathed by the woman who'd given birth to him.

Anger flooded through him. Not at her; he couldn't be angry at her, not ever. But at the authorities who'd hunted him, who'd thrown him in that courtroom and dragged out that ugly trial that his ma had had to sit through. She'd been in the courtroom when that blond cunt had testified. She'd seen the pictures of that kid.

It was their fault he was in this mess. It should never have happened-that FBI lab was corrupt; his own lawyer had said it. He should never have had to go on trial. Should never have had to see that look of hatred in his own mother's eyes.

He staggered off the porch, wandering aimlessly down the street. Nowhere to go. Nobody who even wanted to know him. Jeez, he might just as well go back to the prison and give himself over to rape and beatings for the rest of his life. Or just die now.

Suddenly, a ringing sound intruded on his misery. He'd forgotten all about the cell phone Ms. Vincent had given him. It was in his pocket, untouched, since he hadn't had a single person to call.

He gingerly removed it, not even sure how it worked, then pulled it open. "Hello?" he said, cautious and tentative.

"Hello, Jesse."

The voice sounded strange, tinny and fake. Like one of those automated ones you got whenever you tried to call just about any customer-service number. "Who is this?"