One Hundred and Twelve Days

One hundred and twelve.

That was the number Sarah Collins woke to every morning, scratched into the paint beside her bunk with the edge of a plastic spoon. One hundred and twelve days since two strangers in county uniforms had lifted her fourteen-month-old son out of her arms while she screamed his name across a courtroom.

Noah. Fourteen months old. Old enough to say *Mama*. Too young to understand why she wasn't there to say it back.

The prison had taught her one cruel lesson quickly: insisting you are innocent means nothing once enough people have decided you are not. She had insisted at her arrest. She had insisted to her lawyer. She had insisted to a jury that looked at a single mother with a night job and a dead boyfriend and saw exactly the kind of woman who might hurt someone.

They were wrong. Every one of them.

Sarah had done the math a hundred times, lying awake under the fluorescent hum. Somewhere out there her son was learning to walk without her. Learning new words she would never hear him say for the first time. Being held by hands that were not hers.

She just didn't know yet whose hands they were.

That afternoon, Officer Miller came for her. "Collins. You've got a visit."

Sarah sat up so fast her head spun. A visit. That could only mean one person.

She let them cuff her wrists in front of her. She let them walk her down the gray corridor toward the visitation room. Her heart was already running ahead of her, because after one hundred and twelve days, she was finally going to see her baby.

She had no idea she was walking toward the man who had taken him.