As Clark leaves the halfway house for the last time, he sees a former inmate doing the janitorial job he used to have. | Brittany K. Byrd meets for lunch with her client, Clark, following his release from the halfway house.

At 6:05 a.m. on July 28, Clark signed his name on the Justice Department’s “Notice of Release” form at the front counter.

“You’re out,” said Merrill Wells, facility director of the halfway house. “Good luck! Take care.”

Clark had to report to a nearby U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services office where he filled out more forms and was given a new set of restrictions. He was told that he can’t communicate with anyone with a felony conviction or travel beyond a certain area without permission. He took another drug test and is subject to one at any moment over the next four years.

Clark drove to downtown Dallas for a celebratory lunch with his lawyer, Brittany Byrd. In a sleek restaurant in Klyde Warren Park, Clark ordered Atlantic hake fish and chips and looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching children playing and splashing in the park’s water fountain. He bowed his head and prayed.

“Today is my first day of real freedom,” he said.

That night, Clark drove to the apartment of his wife, Ceyita. She had come to visit him in the halfway house and told him that she wanted him back. She said she still loved him and had not gone out with another man in two years.

In her apartment, Clark looked around for signs of another man. He peeked in the medicine cabinet and her closet. No sign.

Ceyita played him a song by Tyrese called “Shame”:

“I need your forgiveness and your mercy, too. I must be all kinda crazy for what I’ve done to you. I hope you understand that my heart is true. . . . This is not an excuse. I’m just telling the truth. Baby, I’m so sorry for hurting you.”

Clark was touched but uncertain. This was a complicated decision. His wife abandoned him, he felt, yet she never divorced him. With his deep religious faith, Clark does not want to violate his marriage vows.

“I don’t know,” Clark said. “I need to take it slow.”

He agreed to date her to see if “the old feeling is there.”

One recent evening, Clark put on a new shirt. His wife picked him up at his sister’s house and they drove to a nearby T.G.I. Friday’s. Over $12 endless appetizers, they laughed about how they first met at a carwash three decades ago. Then Clark pulled out his new smartphone, and they looked at photos of their sons and grandchildren — another step in his struggle to catch up with the past 22 years.