“We all need hope. You got to want the sunshine,” he said.

I stared down at my notes on the table trying to digest the depth of his tale. Forty years, and they will all say they are innocent but he actually is. At least the courts have said so.

“How have you made it all this time knowing you didn’t do the things they said you did?” I asked.

“A Rosebush kept me alive. I knew that if I took care of it, watered it, gave it some sun, it would survive and so would I.”

I stood, sliding my notebook and pen into my satchel. “I’m curious; Do you hate the world for taking away your life?”

He narrowed his eyes and frowned slightly. “After all that, you still don’t get it. You all think the world owes you, but it don’t owe you a thing. When it’s given all it can, you gotta invent the rest.”

I struggle to forgive my husband for leaving the toilet seat up and this man can forgive forty years.

“What are you going to do with your Rosebush?”

“Leave it inside. Maybe it’ll save the next innocent man.”