On a lovely spring morning I delivered a beautiful and healthy, seven-pound four-ounce baby boy. I named him Khalil after his father. The only sad thing about the birth of my child was that I was forced to deliver him alone in a small town in West Virginia. It was just one of those things. After a tear in the lining of my uterus, I’d begun bleeding heavily and had been transported from Alderson Federal Prison Camp to Greenbrier Valley Medical Center.

Fortunately, I hadn’t been charged for Priest’s death, but the people at Mark-One International did their best to have me charged with blackmail. It turned out that they were paper gangsters, because the only muscle they sent after me was their lawyers. They also seemed reluctant to reveal which account they’d paid me from. I suspected that they had done a few shady things as well, because they quickly let the issue go. After wasting time and money, they found out that they had no way of tracking the money I’d received, finding it, or retrieving it. They’d wired the money to an account that no longer existed, even in Antigua, where it had been formed. At the direction of my banker on the island, I’d done like the rest of the white-collar criminals and moved the money thirty times across four continents.

I wound up taking a plea to tax evasion, since I admitted to accepting hush money that I didn’t report. I laughed at the one-hundred-thousand-dollar fine, but I didn’t laugh at the one-year sentence I received. Nor did I find anything funny about having to go back to “Camp Cupcake,” as the women’s prison was called, while my baby went home with his father.

Khalil survived the bullets that Priest fired into him and he stood by my side every day after that. He also put his career on hold to take care of the baby while he waited for me to come home.

We sold the house in Annapolis after the shooting, of course. Believe it or not, people lined up to buy the house that Priest Alexander died in. I loved Khalil more each day as he would come to West Virginia and stay for a few days at a time.

Everything seemed to work out beautifully as he was able to persuade Frannie to move temporarily to Fort Washington, into our new house. Frannie and Khalil were like new, as she got used to being a grandmother.

In federal prison, the best anyone does with early release is doing eighty percent of whatever they’re sentenced to. With this in mind I counted down the days. Even in the worst case I’d be home by Christmas. Of course I was hoping for September.

As was customary, Khalil and I were on the phone. “So what’s he doing?”

“He’s about to fall asleep, it looks like. Before that he was eating and in a little while he’ll be taking a crap in his Pamper. That’s all he does.” Khalil laughed.

“I would do anything to be there to change one of those. To be able to help you.”

“You will soon.”

My heart ached for my man and my baby. “I love you. I love you both so much,” I said with tears in my eyes, as usual. I talked to Khalil every day and every day I cried. Next he did the usual and prepared to put the phone to the baby’s ear.

“Go ahead baby and sing to him.” As he placed the phone to K.J.’s ear, I began singing the words to an old-school song that one of the inmates had taught me, called “Sukiyaki”:

Khalil said, “Keep singing. He’s smiling.”

It was a rough beginning for our son, having to break out of jail just to bust out of his mother’s womb. But even though it’d started like this, I swore K.J. would have everything that both his father and I didn’t. I promised to myself. Most important, he’d have love and he’d be protected.

Even though I wasn’t there with him every day, I gave all that I could, and that would have to hold him over until I made it home. I didn’t stop singing for three or four minutes. By the time I stopped, Khalil whispered, “He’s asleep, Honey. I’m going to go put him in the crib.”

“Okay.”

“Khalil,” I said in a whisper. “Thank you for giving me another chance. Thank you for saving my life. You might not know it, but you save my life every single day.”

“You’re welcome, Hailey.”

We hung up and I went to my bunk, where I drifted off to sleep for the first time daring to dream about a happy ending.