Page 108 of Just Ten Seconds

He sends me into another holding area, a long hallway with yet another steel door in front of us. I’ve been so entranced with the series of hallways and doors that I forgot to panic about why I’m here.

I’m going to see Benjamin.

“Greenfield,” a guard says as the door opens.

I walk forward. She walks me up to a desk that is set high up in a podium. She assigns me a letter and number. I assume that’s my table placement. I follow her through the room.

It’s a cafeteria setting with square tables in rows. She brings me to a table near the window, and I take a seat.

“Not there,” she instructs. “The inmate needs to be facing the guards.”

That makes sense. I take a seat on the opposite side, my back facing the guards. Looking around, I see almost all the tables are full. Inmates in hunter green sit with their families. They’re eating lunch, some are playing cards, and others are just talking. There’s a child’s play area in the far corner. It’s small and enclosed in a little room with a window I can see through. A man is in there with his daughter.

I turn to the other side of the room, and that’s when I see him walking through. Benjamin appears in hunter-green pants and a white T-shirt. He walks in with a confused look on his face, scanning the room in curiosity. When he sees me sitting here, he stares through black-framed glasses, obviously surprised.

He walks through the room on his own. He stops next to me as if expecting a hug. I don’t stand.

“You’re the last person I expected to see here,” he says as he takes his seat. “I take it, you got my letters.”

“I didn’t read them.” I’m overly defensive. The last thing I want is for him to think I’m here as some sort of peace offering.

Benjamin shuffles in his chair. He looks like he wants to come to my side of the table, but his eyes go up to the guard in the front of the room, and he keeps himself seated.

His knuckle still bears the scar from where he burned his hand when taking a pizza out of the oven. His upper cheek has a scar, which I know is from when he had the chicken pox as a kid. And there’s a small space of unshaven stubble on his chin. He used to always miss that spot.

Still, the most visually poignant thing I remember was his cold, hard face right before he pulled the trigger.

“This was a mistake.” I move to rise, but he holds out a hand.

“Please don’t go.” His words are a plea. I’m still half-sitting, half-standing as his brows dip in earnestness. “You came here for a reason. And you’ll probably never come here again. So, just give me five minutes.”

Five minutes. Three hundred seconds. That’s a lot of lives that can be lost.

My finger rolls over my ring finger. It’s not that I miss having my wedding band there. It’s just that looking at Benjamin reminds me it was there.

The guard at the front is looking at me. My posture must seem off. I settle in my seat and hug my arms as I stare at the table.

The room is loud as people talk, and some laugh. No one argues. They’re all just visiting.

We, however, are strained. Anyone could see that. Even the guard who is still looking at me, hunched over and holding myself together, is staring.

I glance up at Benjamin. His black hair is combed, and his face is clean-shaven. He looks good for someone who lives in a state penitentiary. I don’t know what I thought he’d look like, but good was not it. Gaunt, pale … vicious maybe. I didn’t expect him to look like himself. It’s unnerving.

“I can’t get the picture of you, that night, out of my head. Right now, you look like my Benjamin, but in that moment, you were someone else,” I say.

“I am your Benjamin.” He reaches for my hand, but I hug my body tighter and lean against the seat.

“No. You are a cold and callous man. You stole from people. You ruined lives. You killed Michael.”

“Do you think I feel good about that? Don’t you think I pay a penance every day for what I did? He was my best friend.”

“Then, how could you do it?”

“Because I panicked!” he whisper-yells and then looks over his shoulder. His body stretches across the table as he tells me his plan. “I’m working with the appeals court to get the financial crime charges reduced. My attorney thinks we can appeal the murder conviction and claim self-defense if you re-testify. You don’t know what occurred before that moment. He was attacking me.”

“I was there. Ten seconds, remember? The prosecutor stood there and made me count down the amount of seconds it had taken between when I opened the door to the office and when you pulled the trigger.”

The argument was made to show that ten seconds could be slow enough that, when I entered the room, Benjamin would have been able to stop himself. But he pulled the trigger anyway because this wasn’t an act of passion. It was premeditated.