The old woman covered her face.
“Please stop.”
Mack slapped her.
The sound echoed across the yard.
Something inside me went completely still.
I had seen fights before.
I had seen people get hurt.
I had learned not to react.
But an old woman was different.
She wasn’t fighting back.
She couldn’t even hear properly.
Mack grabbed the front of her cardigan.
“You’re going to learn how things work here.”
Then she raised her hand again.
I stood.
I didn’t think.
I didn’t plan it.
I simply stood.
The entire yard seemed to notice at once.
Mack looked over.
“Sit down.”
I walked toward her.
She laughed.
“You’ve got a death wish?”
I stopped beside the old woman.
“No.”
“Then walk away.”
I helped the old woman stand.
She stared at me.
“Who are you?”
I ignored the question.
Mack stepped closer.
“You don’t understand where you are.”
I looked directly at her.
“I understand.”
She grabbed my wrist.
Hard.
The old woman gasped.
Mack squeezed.
“Then understand this.”
She twisted my arm.
Eight months earlier, that might have frightened me.
But eight months earlier, I hadn’t been the person I was now.
I turned my wrist, stepped inside her grip, and released myself.
Mack stumbled backward.
The laughter around the yard disappeared.
She stared at me.
I stared back.
“Leave her alone.”
Mack’s face hardened.
“Who taught you that?”
I said nothing.
She took one step toward me.
Then stopped.
Because something about my face had changed.
Something she couldn’t understand.
She pointed at me.
“This isn’t finished.”
“No,” I said quietly.
“It isn’t.”
She walked away with Dina and Coleen.
The old woman bent down and began collecting her things.
I helped her.
When I handed her the little metal box, her fingers trembled.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said.
“Done what?”
“Come here.”
She looked at me strangely.
Then she whispered:
“My name is Evelyn Hart.”
I froze.
The name meant nothing to me.
But when she looked into my eyes, I saw recognition in hers.
She stared at me for several seconds.
Then she asked the one question I never expected to hear inside that prison.
“Are you Nora?”
I dropped the photograph.
Because nobody at Westbridge knew that name.
Nobody was supposed to.
PART 2 — THE NAME SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN
I couldn’t breathe.
