He would come to understand that he had never signed one that mattered more in fact.

In the years afterward, when people asked Mitchell why he had approved the visit, he never gave a fully satisfying answer, because the honest answer made him sound softer than a warden is supposed to be.

The truth was that he had approved it against his own better institutional judgment, out of nothing more defensible than a feeling, and everything he believed about his profession told him that feelings were exactly what a man in his position could not afford to act on.

A prison runs on rules, not sentiment, and a warden who bends the rules for every heartbreaking case will soon have no rules left and a great deal of heartbreak.