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me the art of exercising in a tight space, calf raises and isometric pulls. Even as we bent over and coughed for strip searches we made ourselves stronger, and here is the proof: I look like a different person. “You’ll dye your hair tomorrow,” Wanda whispered last night, after my haircut. “And buy some makeup.” It was her only acknowledgment that I was going somewhere, with such possibilities.
    My old boss, Viola, is the first person I recognize, though she looks thirty years older, her shoulders stooped, her head hanging forward as if the thin bun of white hair on top of her head were weighted somehow. She puts a papery, cool hand in mine and squeezes. “It’s good to see you, dear.”
    “You look well. Very fit.”
    Behind her, I see Kathy from our AV department, the only person from the library who wrote to me in prison to say she was sorry the others hadn’t been in touch, but no one knew what to say. She smiles now and gives me a hug. “You look wonderful, Betsy. Maybe we should all go on a prison diet.” She means this as a joke, but now I remember how awkward Kathy could be, how no one ever wanted to take their lunch break with her.
    In the corner, I see Paul standing with an older woman who seems to be making an argument by stabbing the air with her hands. In the old days, Paul always got caught in conversations like this. He isn’t striking like Geoffrey. He’s smaller, softer, his hair and skin paler, but I always thought he was handsome and I’m happy about how he still looks like his old self. He peeks up at me and waves with the tips of his fingers. I wave back.
    I met Paul in my senior year in college, three months before our graduation at an annual party called SOMF—Send Off the Month of February—which culminated in a fraternity tradition of creating snow sculptures and watching while fraternity members urinated on them. “I don’t get it,” Paul said, standing beside me as we watched.
    “It’s symbolic,” I explained. “They’re going to the bathroom on winter.”
    Neither of us was even a little drunk. We smiled at each other and shook our heads, adults in the presence of children. Later we sat down on a stone wall and he told me he hadn’t been to too many parties. I’d spent four years of college going to all of them, afraid that if I didn’t I might miss something. When I asked what he’d been doing instead, he answered seriously, “Going to the library mostly. And labs. I’ve taken a lot of labs. They eat up the afternoons so I have to study at night.” We started dating after that, at a different speed than I’d ever gone before. He was sweet and gentle and hesitant in ways I’d never seen a boy be before. We went out on coffee dates, then lunches, then finally a movie date I ended by asking if he ever thought about kissing me. “I mean, sure,” he stammered. “I’ve thought about it.”
    Eventually I had to tell him that, yes, boys occasionally slept over in the suite I shared with five girls. In fact they slept over most nights, I wanted to say, but didn’t for fear of shocking him. I loved him for knowing less about the ways of the world than I did, and for being the first boyfriend I didn’t feel panicky around. When I was with him, a calm settled over me and, for the first time in my life, I took charge of things. We decided we’d stay in the area for grad school, live together to save money, and get married the following year, all before we’d known each other six months.
    When I asked him for a divorce two years after my conviction—two years of visits spent going over the mistakes we’d made in my trial—I said it was for him. I wanted to give him a chance to have a real life, by which I suppose I meant to have children with someone else, but I was thinking of myself, too. I wanted to leave the past behind. When he resisted, as I knew he would, I told him I was tired of focusing on my case. “Don’t you see I won’t have a life if I do