The bus dropped her off just past dawn.
No announcement. No kindness. Just the hiss of brakes, a cold gust of air, and the door folding open like a mouth that didn’t care whether she stepped out or not.
Margaret Ellis stood there for a moment, clutching a canvas bag that held everything she owned: two changes of clothes, a pair of worn gloves, and a folded prison release paper she had read so many times the ink had faded.
Seventy-two years old.
Thirty-two years served.
And nowhere to go.
The bus pulled away, leaving behind a thin trail of exhaust and silence.
In front of her sat a gas station—abandoned, half-collapsed, and forgotten by time. The sign above it once read HENDERSON
FUEL, but now only H…SON remained, the rest eaten away by rust and storms. One pump leaned crookedly, like a tired old man who had given up pretending he was still standing straight.
This was where the prison transport officer had told her to get off.
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