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up.”
    For a moment, Darnell sat silent as stone. Heath feared that he’d lost the man and the interview would be over. Then Darnell leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. “Shoulda been easier for her. I made her life hard.”
    “Deshondra has a good life. She’s a schoolteacher. She has two healthy children. A good husband.” Heath reached into his briefcase and took out a small envelope. “She sent new pictures of the kids.” He took the pictures from the envelope and placed them on the table, turning them so they were right-side up for Darnell. “Things aren’t easy for her, but they’re manageable. She and her husband are about to close on a house.”
    As he gazed at the two pictures, Darnell’s lips quivered for just a moment and he blinked away a tear. Then, once more, he was stone. “Trashae is looking more an’ more like her momma ever’ day.” Tenderly, he touched the photograph of the seven-year-old girl with wild hair and a gap-toothed smile. “An’ Keywon gets bigger every time I see him.” The little boywas five and had tried to look serious in the photo, but his dark eyes glimmered with suppressed merriment.
    Darnell cleared his throat. “You see them lately?”
    “This morning.”
    “They lookin’ good?”
    “They are. I had breakfast with them at McDonald’s.”
    A chuckle rumbled from deep inside Darnell’s chest. “In the play area, I suppose.”
    Heath hesitated, thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have been so specific. Something as simple as taking his grandkids to McDonald’s was never going to happen for Darnell Lester.
    “Yeah.”
    Darnell smiled a little and put his fingers on the two photographs. He dragged them to his side of the table, and the paper sliding across the metal surface whispered loud enough to be heard in the silence. “Onliest place to take kids that size. I ’member takin’ Deshondra. Her favorite place to go.” He smiled again and darted a look at Heath. “Till she met Mr. Ronald McDonald himself. Had a guy there in the clown suit. Deshondra didn’t care for that at all. Put her off goin’ to McDonald’s for a week.”
    “Some people have problems with clowns.”
    “You?”
    Heath shook his head. Clowns had never scared him. He had worse fears than any guy dressed in a shaggy wig, a red rubber nose, and pancake makeup could give him. Lionel Bridger was the only thing Heath had ever feared.
    “Me neither.” Darnell picked up the photographs and slid them into his pocket.
    “Deshondra also asked me to tell you that she was praying for you.”
    “That’s good. But she should save her prayers for her ownself. Two kids like that can be a lotta hard work.”
    “She’s up to it. But she’s worried about you.”
    Darnell shook his head. “Nothin’ to worry about when it comes to me. Ever’thin’ that’s gonna be done to me, that’s already in the book. I’m just markin’ time till we get it over with. I’ve made my peace with God.”
    “That’s what I want to talk about.” Heath leaned forward then. “That peace you’ve made.”
    That was one of the things that had first stood out when Heath had met Darnell Lester five months ago. The man was staring death in the face, constantly watched and surrounded by other death row inmates. During that time, over a dozen condemned men had been executed by lethal injection. Darnell had known a few of them. The condemned were a special breed in the prison, and they had an unstated respect for each other. In the cell blocks, each man stood tall on his own two legs or he died inside.
    But Darnell had found God years ago. Warden Billy Wilkins had told Heath that himself when he’d first come to the prison five months ago. Wilkins had a soft spot in his heart for Darnell and had wished Heath well in his endeavors.
    “If there’s any man that deserves a change from death sentence to life imprisonment, it’s that man.”
    When Heath had first met Darnell, the man had