North Country(30)

I chuckle. It’s bad enough I’m thirty-eight and needing a ride everywhere from my mother. She’s not meeting my parole officer with me. “I can handle it. But I don’t know how long this’ll take.”

“That’s okay. I can kill time at the feed store. They have a special on fertilizer. Just text me when you’re done.” She holds up the new phone sitting in the cup holder. I would have left it there. “Do you remember how?”

“I’ll figure it out.” The last time I texted anyone, it was with a tiny flip phone, the messages short and painful to send with the three-letter number pad. This thing? Nothing makes me feel my absence from civilization more acutely than a tiny computer I’m supposed to carry around in my pocket.

Thomas showed me a few basics yesterday—how to set up a face-screening password and connect my email address—his fingers flying over the screen as he prattled words like iOS and AirDrop. He may as well have been speaking German.

“Okay, honey. Just get this over with so we can go to the bank, and the license office, and all that other fun stuff. We’ve got a long list of things to attack today.” She reaches across and smooths a wrinkled hand over my forearm, squeezing once before she releases me.

“See you in a bit.” I slide out of the truck and move for a front porch decorated with various flower planters and palms, browning at the ends with the colder temperatures. The wooden steps creak under my weight.

The foyer inside is cramped, the left side delegated to holding coat hooks and shoe mats. The air smells of freshly brewed coffee, perfume, and citrus cleaner. Everything is gray and beige except for the floors, which look like original hardwood refinished in a golden oak. Framed motivational pictures decorate the wall. Images of daunting snowcapped mountains and scenic meadows with slogans like “From setbacks come comebacks,” “Rebuild. Renew. Rise,” and “The past is a lesson, not a life sentence.” That, I’d argue, is false advertising.

A middle-aged brunette with black-brown eyes and long, red-painted nails peers up at me from her reception desk. “Name.”

She sounds as excited to be here as I am. “Logan Landry. I have a ten a.m. with—”

“Glen Howard. So you’re the one causing such a stir.” She appraises me with a gaze that says she deals with convicts all day long and isn’t the least bit unsettled by me.

“How am I doing that?”

Her eyes flitter over my face, slowing on the scar a beat, and then she reaches across her desk to collect a clipboard. “Fill this out.” She nods toward a row of chairs. “I’ll call you when he’s ready.”

With a nod of thanks—because Farrah, as the name plate reads, isn’t interested in conversation either—I take my seat.





“They really made an example out of you, huh?” Glen Howard flips one page after another from the thick stack before him, pausing only briefly to skim the highlights. “And on your eighteenth birthday too. You couldn’t have committed your crimes a week earlier?” My parole officer’s tone is dry, his expression flat, but I sense his pokes are meant to test me—my reaction, my remorse, or both—so I stay quiet and study his pockmarked cheeks and small eyes. He must be close to sixty, his middle thick, and his tawny-beige skin heavily creased. The pack of smokes sitting on a nearby filing cabinet label him a smoker, but even if they weren’t there, the stench of tobacco gives him away.

A moment passes and then he flips the page over. “Exemplary inmate for years, until the day Travis Dorsey stabbed you. Here—” He taps his own body. “What was that about?”

“Can’t remember,” I lie.

By Glen’s fleeting smirk, he knows it. “I used to work out of Sudbury. I remember Dorsey. He’s what we called a frequent flyer. Brief stints, in and out, until he ended up doing real time. Something about the name Murphy rang a bell, so I checked Dorsey’s old files and saw the no-contact restriction with a Hank Murphy. He’s the brother of the deceased Ian Murphy. What a coincidence.” His deadpan tone suggests otherwise. The man has done his homework on me. “So, you knew Dorsey?”

“Not until I went inside,” I answer truthfully.

“What’d he have beef with you over? Or was it the other way around?”

“He came after me. It was self-defense.”

“Self-defense,” he echoes. “Severe concussion with brain swelling, broken jaw, internal bleeding, partial permanent paralysis …” He reads out loud the details I’m well acquainted with. “Guess you don’t like getting stabbed.”

It had nothing to do with getting stabbed and everything to do with the threats Travis Dorsey uttered after he drove the shiv into my body. “Does anyone? ”

“If there is, I haven’t met them yet.” Glen closes the file folder—he’s already read it front to back, many times over, likely—and reaches for another one. “Well, you arrived on time for your initial reporting appointment, so that’s a good start.” He scribbles something on a page. “My job today is to go over the terms of your release as well as your correctional plan and make sure you understand them both so you don’t end up back in custody. At the end of each meeting, I will file a report laying out everything we’ve discussed with the Offender Management System, which is accessible to the Parole Board of Canada. Any questions so far? Good,” he goes on without waiting for my answer. “The terms of your release are pretty basic. Report to me every other week, get a job, no drugs or alcohol. You’ll fill one of these before you leave today—” He holds up a medical plastic bag with a piss cup inside before tossing it onto the desk in front of me. “And every visit until I decide we don’t need to. It doesn’t look like you had any addictions before you went in and there’s nothing to suggest you developed one while on the inside, so I honestly don’t give a shit if you have the odd beer, ’kay? Just don’t be stupid about it, like ordering at the bar where everyone’s a witness. You know I’m gonna make you piss in a cup every two weeks, so let’s make sure your test comes back clean, got it?”