Chapter 13 Epilogue Three Years Later
Epilogue: Three Years Later
Laura
There are prisons colder than Attica—hospitals, childhood bedrooms—but for sheer economy of suffering, nothing matches this place at Christmas.
Even the C-block guards, bred to hostility, carry a faint air of defeat as they shunt us cattle from metal detector to waiting room, like they know we are all in hell together and someone, somewhere, is getting exactly what they deserve.
Three years is enough. A term, a sentence, a gestation. Today, I grant him the only parole ever truly available to men like him: closure.
The visitation hall is a box of wet cinderblock and chipped Formica, its fluorescent lighting tuned to hum a frequency just above sanity.
I arrive before anyone else, my footsteps echoing through empty corridors like a funeral procession.
There are already two guards in the room, keeping post at either end, bored and benignly hostile as they watch my body language for sudden intent.
For a moment, I imagine sprinting past plexiglass, vaulting the partition like a gymnast, crushing my father’s throat between these hands as easily as popping the head off a rose. I savor the vision and let it pass.
Dominic Stasio enters five minutes late, as if savoring his microscopic power.
He’s smaller than the man who dominated every room, but there’s a tightness in his shoulders I recognize, a paradox of vulnerability so feral it reads as threat.
Time has aged every bone in his face, but his eyes are still black.
As he sits, he looks at me and sneers. There is the slow, symmetrical raising of the phones.
“You took your time,” I say, softly, as if it matters.
His first words are: “I thought you’d never come.” His voice is battered, rasping, but the edge is pure father. “I suppose you want something.”
I shake my head. “That was always your problem. You think everyone’s a beggar. I’m not here for you.”
He laughs, a noise with the texture of crushed ice. “No? Then why this parade?” He leans in, forehead close to the screen. “You want to see what’s left of me? You want forgiveness, Laura?”
I lay a hand on the metal table, fingers spread to steady it. “No. I’m here because the dead deserve a coffin, not a ghost. I want you to hear it: I’m done with you.” I let the sentence calcify between us. “This is goodbye.”
That gets him. I see it—a flicker under the scowl, a momentary human grief, quickly suppressed. He bares his teeth. “You haven’t changed,” he says. “Still a sentimental little shit. You read too much poetry as a child.”
“It was mother who read to me,” I say, watching the words strike him, “but you made sure to erase all traces of her. Except me.”
He ignores the bait. “You’ve been busy,” he says, almost admiring. “I hear things. Some say you’re working for Serpico’s Sicily.” He snorts. “You’ll always be a cheap imitation of me.”
It’s almost disappointing how quickly he tries to define me. And in typical fashion, he couldn’t be more wrong. “What I do with my life is none of your business.”
He looks at my hands, my clothes, as if searching for evidence of filth or failure. “You could have had everything. You could have been queen.”
“Of what? The prison yard? You taught me well how to survive it.” I tap the glass, a gentle, surgical gesture. “But you never learned how to let go. That’s why you’re here.”
He bristles. “I’m here because my daughter is a traitor. You sold me out. You poisoned the only family you ever had.”
This, finally, I’m prepared for. “No,” I say, “you destroyed yourself, year by year, cruelty by cruelty. I was loyal until the day you put a bullet in the dog that slept at my feet. I was loyal even after my mother’s heart stopped.
I was loyal when you secretly banished the only man I’ve ever loved.
The only thing I ever betrayed was your illusion. ”
He shakes his head, but the fury drains from him, replaced by something shabbier.
“You know what killed you?” I continue, voice so calm I barely recognize it as my own. “It was never the Feds or the rats in your crew. It was loneliness. You made an art of it, Dad. You infected every room with it until there was nothing left to love. Not even yourself.”
“Am I supposed to thank you for the lesson?” he spits.
I glance around the room, the other inmates and their half-alive relatives, the guards staring into space. “No. There’s nothing left for you to learn. All that’s left is rot.”
He watches me, silent. In another time, he might have said something tender, or at least convincing. Now the tank is empty; the performance is over. He’s just a dying man in a loud suit, clinging to the shrapnel of his legend.
“I know what you’re terrified of,” I say. “It’s not death. It’s oblivion. You wasted your life trying to make yourself immortal. But you’ll be forgotten, just like the rest. The only difference is, I’ll never say your name again.”
He blanches. For a razor-slice moment, he’s vulnerable. A man looking for one more miracle.
His hand trembles on the receiver. “Laura,” he says, almost a whisper, “I never wanted—”
“That’s right,” I say. “You never wanted. Only took. Only broke.”
I stand, leaving the phone dangling against the glass. “You won’t see me again. Buon Natale, Dominic.”
The guards don’t react as I walk away. Maybe they, too, have seen this play a thousand times. I push through the door, past the strip search and the metal detectors, into the morning sun— shielding my eyes like a vampire.
As I reach the lot, my breath clouds in the cold and vanishes. I glance once, briefly, at the gray perimeter, and allow myself a single, private laugh. I can already feel the world cleansing itself of him. I am done. We’re both finally free.
There are prisons, and there are prisons. Some you carry forever, and some you just visit once to pay respects to the dead.
After that, you go home.
But in the car, with the engine humming and the radio silent, I touch my own face and find it wet. Pierce lifts my hand to his lips and once again soothes my soul. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
“Yes. I’m finally okay.”
“Merry Christmas, my love.” He wipes the lone tear cascading down my cheek.
I smile and lean into his embrace. “Merry Christmas.”