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Back Heaven, My Home Save as PDF
Chapters (40)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Marion County
  7. Part One
  8. 1.
  9. 2.
  10. 3.
  11. 4.
  12. Part Two
  13. 5.
  14. 6.
  15. 7.
  16. 8.
  17. 9.
  18. Part Three
  19. 10.
  20. 11.
  21. 12.
  22. 13.
  23. 14.
  24. 15.
  25. 16.
  26. Part Four
  27. 17.
  28. 18.
  29. 19.
  30. 20.
  31. 21.
  32. 22.
  33. 23.
  34. 24.
  35. Camilla
  36. Acknowledgments
  37. Discover More
  38. About the Author
  39. Also by Attica Locke
  40. Praise for Attica Locke’s

That was the thing about second chances—it was impossible to know what was real or what wasn’t; every act of forgiveness was a leap of faith. Leroy Page said he’d been burned before, as had every black person in this country. But Darren needed Bill King now, needed his false confession in the Malvo homicide.

He heard the words again: Next week, next week.

Darren kept pushing, kept searching.

According to a site that tracked the actions of the state parole board, there was a panel at Telford Unit next Thursday, December 15, and Bill Avery King was due to go before the board. Was this the reason soon had been underlined in his letter to the governor? What made him so certain he might be home by Christmas? And what exactly was he telling Rosemary to call off?

By then the fifth of bourbon was whistling with empty air when Darren turned it up to his mouth, wasn’t but a few swallows left, and he set it down on the nightstand and grabbed the florid hotel stationery. He tore off five sheets and at the top of each one he wrote the name of each member of the parole board that was set to gather and decide fates on December 15. Pam Sadler, Rita Montes, Arturo Valle, Austin Collins, and J. P. Graham. Then under each person’s name he wrote down as much information as he could find online, looking for any connection to Rosemary King. It wasn’t until he realized that Austin Collins was a Dallas banker who worked with several Texas real estate developers, including a Gaines Properties out of Longview, that Darren saw he’d been coming at this all wrong. It wasn’t Rosemary who had the connection to at least three members of Bill’s parole-board panel (a clean majority). She wasn’t the one who could rig the results of the parole hearing. It was Sandler Gaines, it seemed, who was willing to commit a felony for Rosemary’s son.

21.

21.

IT WASN’T until he woke up the next morning, still in the same clothes from the night before, that he realized the mistake he’d made. The bourbon, the fact that he drank on an empty stomach washed in fish grease, the call to Wilson, the deal he’d made with Bill King—he stood up regretting all of it.