The Paper Bag

Nine years, two months, and six days.

Danny Hale counted in days because days were the only thing they let him keep. Weeks belonged to the rota. Months belonged to the parole board. But a day was his — twenty-four hours he could put in his pocket and carry to the next one.

On the morning of the three thousand, three hundred and forty-fourth, a man in a grey shirt slid a brown paper bag across a desk and said, "Property. Sign here."

Inside was a jacket. His jacket. The one he'd been wearing the night it all went wrong, folded by someone who didn't care about folding. It still smelled faintly of that night — rain and diesel and the inside of a police van.

He put it on anyway.