RYKER
I found Cole in his room at six in the morning packing a bag that was not very full.
That was its own kind of answer. Three years inside these walls and everything he owned fit into one bag with room to spare
. A man packs the way he lives. Cole had been holding this place lightly the entire time, one hand on the strap, ready to go, and none of us had noticed because he smiled at dinner and won at cards and made it look like belonging.
He glanced up when I came in. Neither of us spoke.
I leaned against the doorframe and watched him fold a shirt and put it in the bag. Then another one. The absolute mundane ordinary motion of it — a man folding shirts at dawn — was harder to watch than the vote had been. The vote was words in a room. This was cloth and hands and a zipper, and it was actually happening.
