Chapter 10 #3
The hope and fear all tangled together until you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
He walks to the table slowly, like he's afraid she might bolt if he moves too fast.
Like she's a wild animal he doesn't want to spook.
Vanna doesn't bolt.
She sits frozen, her hand crushing mine, her eyes fixed on the man who helped destroy her life.
But also the man who gave her life in the first place.
The man whose letters she's been reading and rereading for weeks.
The man who said he was proud of her.
"Vanna." His voice is rough, thick with emotion. "You came."
"I came."
He pulls out the chair across from her and sits.
For a long moment, they just look at each other.
Father and daughter, separated by a table and years, and a lifetime of pain.
The silence stretches between them, heavy with everything that's been said and everything that hasn't.
I stay quiet.
This isn't my moment.
I'm just here to support, to catch her if she falls, to make sure she knows she's not alone.
"You look good," Rick says finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "Healthy. Really healthy. The letters, you said you were pregnant..."
"I am." She puts her free hand on her stomach, her fingers splaying across the small curve. "About fourteen weeks now."
His eyes shine with tears he's trying not to shed. "I'm going to be a grandfather."
"Yeah. You are."
"That's..." He shakes his head, at a loss for words. "That's amazing. I never thought I'd—" He stops, swallows hard. "I never thought I'd get to know. I figured you'd have kids someday, but I never imagined you'd tell me about it. That you'd want me to know."
"Neither did I," Vanna admits. "For a long time, I didn't. I wanted you to rot in here without ever knowing anything about my life. I wanted you to suffer the way I suffered."
"I deserve that."
"Maybe. Probably." She takes a breath. "But I'm tired of being angry. I'm tired of carrying around all this hate. It's too heavy. And I've got other things to carry now."
She glances down at her stomach, and Rick's eyes follow.
When he looks back up, there are tears streaming down his face.
He doesn't bother to wipe them away.
"I'm sorry." His voice is barely audible. "I know I've said it in the letters, but I need to say it to your face. I'm sorry for everything. For your mother. For the drugs. For leaving you alone when you needed me most. For being the reason you ended up in this life."
"You didn't leave. You got arrested."
"Same thing." He looks up, meeting her eyes.
"I should have been stronger. Should have been a real father to you instead of a junkie and a dealer who cared more about the next score than his own kid.
If I'd been different—if I'd gotten clean, if I'd been the man you deserved—maybe you wouldn't have ended up the same way. "
"Don't." Vanna cuts him off, her voice sharper than I expected. "Don't do that. Don't take responsibility for my choices. I made my own decisions. You didn't put the needle in my arm."
"But I showed you where to find it, and I showed your mother too."
She's quiet for a moment.
The weight of that truth settles over the table like a blanket.
"Yeah," she says finally. "You did."
"And you found your way out anyway. Despite everything I taught you, everything I showed you, all the wrong paths I led you down.
" Rick's voice is thick with emotion. "You're stronger than I ever was, Vanna.
Stronger than your mother. You got out. You got clean.
You're building a life." He gestures at me.
"You've got a man who loves you, who stuck by you through all of it.
You've got a baby on the way. You've got everything I never had the courage to fight for. "
"I almost didn't make it." Vanna's voice is small, vulnerable in a way I rarely hear. "I came so close to dying so many times. There were moments—so many moments—where I thought I wouldn't survive the night."
"But you did. You're here." He reaches across the table, stopping just short of touching her. His hand hovers in the space between them, trembling slightly. "You're here, and you're alive, and I'm so goddamn proud of you I can barely breathe."
Vanna stares at his outstretched hand.
I can see the war in her eyes—the anger and the grief and the desperate, painful hope.
The little girl who wanted her daddy, fighting with the woman who knows what he cost her.
Then she reaches out and takes it.
Rick makes a sound—half sob, half laugh—and holds on like he's afraid she'll disappear.
Like if he lets go, she'll vanish and he'll wake up in his cell alone, realizing it was all a dream.
"I haven't forgiven you," Vanna says quietly. "I don't know if I ever will."
"I know."
"But I'm willing to try. To build something new. Something that isn't just pain and anger and all the ways we've hurt each other."
"That's all I want." His voice breaks. "That's all I've ever wanted."
They sit there, father and daughter, hands clasped across the table.
I watch them and think about my own father—dead in a fire when I was nine, a memory I carry like a scar.
At least Vanna gets this.
At least she gets the chance to rebuild what was broken.
"Tell me about the baby," Rick says after a while. "Tell me everything."
So she does.
She tells him about the pregnancy, about the ultrasound, about the tiny heartbeat on the monitor.
She tells him about the clubhouse, about Tildie and Aunt Ellie and the brothers who've become her family.
She tells him about the rocking chair and the plans for the nursery and the way I talk to her stomach at night, telling the baby stories about motorcycles and the mountains.
She doesn't tell him about Virgil. About the attack. About the bruises hidden under her scarf.
That's not for him. That's for us. For the club.
When visiting hours end, we say our goodbyes.
Rick hugs his daughter for the first time in twelve years—a brief, fierce embrace that leaves them both crying.
"Take care of her," he says to me as they pull apart.
"I will."
"And take care of my grandchild."
"That too."
He nods, satisfied.
Then he turns and walks back through the door, back to his cell, back to the life he's been living for twelve years.
Vanna is quiet as we leave the prison.
Quiet as we walk to the truck.
Quiet as I open her door and help her inside.
But when I slide behind the wheel, she reaches for my hand.
"Thank you," she says. "For being here. For all of it."
"Always."
She leans her head against my shoulder and closes her eyes.
Within minutes, she's asleep, exhausted by the emotional weight of the day.
I drive through the winter landscape, my wife beside me, our baby growing inside her, and I think about everything that's happened.
The attack. The vote. The promise we made in that chapel.
Virgil is going to die.
It's not a question of if, but when.
And when that day comes, I'm going to be the one to pull the trigger.
But for now, I drive. I hold my wife's hand.
And I pray that everything I'm doing will be enough to keep them safe.
One day at a time.