Chapter 47 Maeve
MAEVE
The prison, a sprawling complex of squat concrete buildings, was five miles outside Blackwell Falls.
Poe was quiet, his hand wrapped tightly around mine on the console of the Hummer as we passed the snow-covered fields that surrounded the prison.
It was almost March, that point in winter when it seemed like it would never end, when spring and summer felt like a cruel dream.
We approached a gate manned with a guard, and Poe told him we were there to see Whit Killborn. Once we were waved though, we parked in a big lot outside the main building.
Poe turned off the car. “You don’t have to do this.”
I squeezed his hand. “I want to. I want to meet your family.”
He shook his head and looked down at our joined hands.
“What?” I asked. “Talk to me.”
“It’s just another shitty thing for you to have to experience,” he said. “And this one’s because of me.”
“It’s not shitty. I mean, okay, jail is probably shitty, but not the way you mean. It’s just part of life, and life is messy and complicated. So are people. I’m not some princess you have to protect from that. I’ve seen it for myself.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just looked into my eyes until I felt like I was falling into his. “I really love you, little bird, you know that?”
“I really love you too.” I really, really meant it.
We entered the building and lined up behind some other people who seemed to be there for visiting day. I was nervous, not because we were at a jail but because I was meeting more of Poe’s family.
When we got to the front of the line, Poe gave a middle-aged lady with tight black curls and bored expression his name. Then he turned to me.
“This is Maeve Killborn, my wife.”
I coughed, choking on my own spit, and the lady looked up at me with concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah… I’m… fine,” I choked out.
His wife?
She checked me off her list and waved us through.
“Your wife?” I hissed.
He shrugged. “It was the only way I could get you in on such short notice. Besides, I kind of like the sound of it.”
I kind of liked the sound of it too, which was insane considering a year ago I’d been a twenty-one-year-old community college graduate with a retail job whose sole purpose in life was vengeance.
I wasn’t equipped to be someone’s wife.
We stored our stuff in lockers, including my purse and our phones, and then we were led into a windowless room with the kinds of plastic tables and chairs we’d had in the Lushberry break room and two vending machines, one filled with soda, the other with snacks.
A uniformed guard leaned against one wall, his posture relaxed but his gaze watchful, and several other visitors had already claimed seats at some of the tables.
“Where do we sit?” I asked.
“Wherever,” Poe said. “I’m going to grab Whit something from the vending machine. Gran’s orders.”
I chose a table and sat while Poe fed his bank card into the vending machine. Other visitors wandered in, a couple of them with children, and my heart clenched in my chest. Losing June had just about broken me, but I wasn’t the only one in the world who’d lost something.
Maybe it should have made me depressed to realize how much loss, how much sorrow, there as in the world, but instead it made me feel less alone. Everyone had bad stuff to deal with at one time or another, and it felt meaningful to realize that somehow we all managed to muddle our way through it.
Poe returned to the table with a Mountain Dew and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos just as a loud electronic bell rang through the complex. Beyond the room, metal clanged and footsteps sounded on the linoleum floors.
Then the door opened and a guard entered the room leading a line of men in orange jumpsuits. One of the kids in the room, a blond-haired little girl of about five years old carrying a Barbie, exclaimed, “Daddy!”
The room was filled with the sights and sounds of reunion: smiles, tears, and even some laughter.
But not everyone was happy.
A girl about my age with dark hair and a tear-stained face sat quietly as a scrawny tattooed guy not much older than me sat across from her at one of the tables. A few tables away, a man in his forties didn’t get up as his younger mirror image approached.
I guess we were in the second category of people, the ones who weren’t happy, because Poe didn’t get up when a tall, slender dark-haired man approached. I knew immediately he was Poe’s brother. He had Poe’s dark blue eyes, his sharp nose and cheekbones.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Whit said, dropping into a chair at the table.
Poe pushed the soda and Doritos toward Whit. “Gramps and Gran have the flu.”
“They asked you to come?”
Poe nodded. “But I was overdue a visit anyway.”
Whit’s gaze drifted to me.
“Maeve, this is my brother, Whit.”
I held out my hand.
“No touching,” the guard near the wall barked.
I withdrew my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“This is your wife?” he asked Poe.
“Not officially,” Poe said. “But i wanted you to meet her.”
Whit studied my face, like he was looking for my life story there. “Nice to meet you.”
He leaned back in his chair and cracked open the Mountain Dew, took a long drink.
“Your commissary account topped up?” Poe asked.
“That you?” Whit asked.
Poe nodded.
They were talking in the shorthand of siblings. I recognized it and felt June’s absence all over again.
“Thanks,” Whit said.
“How are you feeling?” Poe asked.
Whit touched his stomach. “Better.”
They were talking about the incident that had happened a couple of months earlier when Whit had been stabbed.
“Good,” Poe said.
The rest of the visit was no less stilted. Poe caught Whit up on their grandparents, including the old car his gramps was restoring and his grandmother’s diabetes. Whit talked about how he spent his free time: reading mostly, and working out, although he was half the size of Poe.
I mostly listened, drinking in this new view of Poe as big brother, feeling the tension and pain that came from their shared history.
It was more than a little awkward to witness, but I felt lucky to be let in, to see this side of Poe and the life he kept mostly separate from the one we lived together with Bram and Remy at the loft.
The visit only lasted an hour. Then we were saying goodbye, Poe and Whit standing a few feet apart, an ocean of words between them that neither could say.
We watched as the guard escorted the prisoners out of the room. The dark-haired girl was crying, the older man staring helplessly after his son. The little girl played with her Barbie, already on to the next moment of her life.
Childhood was probably the ultimate in mindfulness. Too bad we didn’t realize it while we could still enjoy it.
Poe held my hand as we backtracked through the prison: out of the meeting room and into the lockers to collect our things, past the second checkpoint and onto the first, where we signed out before stepping outside.
The cold was biting, but Poe stopped and inhaled a deep breath, like he was in no hurry to get to the car.
I got it. The prison had felt confining even though we’d been there by choice, like at any moment someone might lock the doors, trapping us inside with everyone else.
Being outside felt like a gift, even in the cold, and I stood alongside Poe, breathing in the cold clean air until he was ready to go to the car.
“You okay?” I asked as we crossed the parking lot.
He nodded. “I should come more often.”
“It seems like you guys have a lot to say to each other.”
One side of his mouth turned up into a lopsided smile. “That’s a funny thing to say after listening to me and White trying to make conversation for an hour.”
“That’s why it seems like you guys have a lot to say to each other, a lot you haven’t said yet.”
“You’re too sharp for your own good, little bird.”
He opened my car door.
I climbed in then turned to take his face in my hands. “Thanks for bringing me.”
“Thanks for wanting to come.” He kissed me. “Want to grab some lunch on the way home?”
I nodded. “Sounds good. Where do you want to go?”
“Are you up for a little drive?” he asked.
“I’m all yours for the day.”
He grinned. “Blackwell Hollow it is.”