Epilogue
I hate the smell of prisons. It smells like metal and bleach and regret every time I step into this place.
The guard leads me down the hallway after I’ve signed in, and I keep thinking that when I see him again, I’ll turn it all off.
I’ll switch off all my emotions like I’m used to doing because of him.
I’ll go numb as soon as I see his face, like I always do.
But I can’t. Not today. Not anymore. I’ve got my wife and kids back home, who don’t deserve the aftermath that always comes with seeing him here. I don’t get to shut down anymore.
This time…I’m letting go of all the anger.
The door buzzes, and I step inside the visiting room.
No matter how many times I’ve visited over the years, it still confuses my brain to see him in that navy blue jumpsuit instead of a suit and tie.
He looks a lot…smaller here. I love it. I love that this place has humbled him.
It’s finally put him in his place, whether he likes it or not.
He stands when he sees me, like he thinks he still has some claim to the space I take up. Like he’s still my father in any way that matters. He hasn’t been that in…well, forever.
I sit down without greeting him, lacing my fingers together on top of the table between us. He clears his throat as he sits down.
“Mason,” he says, his voice a little rough.
“Why am I here?” I ask.
I’ve only come to visit him a few times over the years.
Only when something needed to be discussed about the business I now fully own, or when I wanted him to know how much I changed about the empire he thought he built—the one I’ve fixed and put in the hands of partners I trust, while I still get to live out the dream I deserved to chase—the one he hated me so much for having.
Today I was requested to come. Something he’s never done. Something that ate at me for a while until I decided to finally give in to the curiosity that was tugging at me.
“I…I’m sorry, Mase.”
I look up at him, confused, like I didn’t hear him right.
I can’t help but laugh in his face. “That’s it? That’s what I came here for?”
His face falls, and for a second I see something almost human under all that polished cruelty.
It makes me angry. I don’t want it. Not now.
Where was any of that for the past thirty-two years?
Where was the sorry at when I was thirteen and begging for his comfort while I held my dying mother’s body, and all he could do was try to drag me away and stop my tears?
I don’t want it. He can keep it for all I care.
I’ve moved on from being that little boy, begging his dad for love. I’ve healed. I’ve become the man and father he could never dream of being.
He drags a hand down his face. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Yeah,” I say spitefully. “You’ve never known how to be a decent human. Why try now?”
I really have done a lot of healing over the years. A lot of therapy and a lot of talking to God when no one was around to watch me break down and cry over the version of myself I never got to be when I was younger, because it was taken from me every chance it got.
Still…there’s anger under all the healed parts. It doesn’t look the same as it used to. It doesn’t come out on the people I love, and it doesn’t come in the form of numbness from a bottle. But it does come out in times like these.
His eyes glisten, and he starts blinking hard, like he’s trying to keep the tears from spilling.
And then he does something I’ve never seen him do in all my thirty-two years of life.
He breaks. Fully breaks. Hands to his face, tears running down his cheeks.
It makes me uncomfortable, like I have no idea what to do with all of this right now.
“I loved your mother,” he says, the confession ripping out of him like it hurts. “Dammit, Mason. I loved her.”
I don’t respond at first. I don’t know how to.
“Why…” I eventually strain out, “Why are you telling me this?”
“I’ve been seeing a therapist in here,” he tells me.
“Great, probably should have tried that three or four decades ago. Maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here now, having this conversation.”
“I—I just need to get this out, son.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Mason—”
My jaw tightens, feeling too many emotions right now.
“Just say whatever it is you need to get off your chest so I can go back home to my actual family.”
“We met in high school. We were kids. She was…she was a light. The kind that makes you think you can be better just by standing close to it.”
I cross my arms as I listen, still needing some kind of barrier against him with how I’m feeling.
I know what a light my mom was. Trust me, I know that light. I married that light. I found someone who was brighter than I deserved to experience. The only difference is that I didn’t kill her light like Scott killed my mother’s light.
“She got pregnant when she was sixteen,” he continues. “And we were terrified. We told ourselves we’d make it work. That we’d be a family—”
Confusion hits me as he keeps talking, and I have to stop him. “She didn’t have me until she was nineteen? What are you talking about?”
His throat bobs, and his eyes go even more glassy now. “That’s because you weren’t her first.”
I go still, hands freezing on top of the table. “What?”
“You had an older sister,” he says. “Her name was…was—Hailey.” He swallows hard. “We don’t talk about her. We never did after—”
My heart slams against my ribs so hard it hurts. “After what?”
He looks like he doesn’t want to say it, but forces himself to. “After she died.”
I go completely still, and everything around us quiets.
“She was only a year old,” he tells me, voice breaking.
My stomach turns violently. I don’t even know where to put that information in my brain. It doesn’t fit anywhere.
Scott fists his hands on top of the table, squeezing them like it’ll bring some relief to the words he’s saying.
“A couple of weeks before her first birthday, she got a fever, a cough that turned into something worse. One minute she was playing and the next—” He stops, breath hitching.
“The next thing we knew, we were in the hospital, watching her be hooked up to tubes and doctors doing everything they could until…until she couldn’t hold on anymore. And I…I blamed your mother.”
My teeth grind. “You blamed Mom…for her getting sick?”
His eyes flick up, frantic. “I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t look at myself after she died. I couldn’t—” He shakes his head, voice wrecked. “I turned it into her fault because if it wasn’t, then it was mine. And I couldn’t survive that.”
I sit back, bile rising. “So you punished her instead?”
He nods. It’s weak…like him.
“She went downhill after,” he says. “She became paranoid—terrified of every cough, every sneeze. Afraid of the world, afraid of herself. She couldn’t breathe without thinking the next breath might be the one that takes her away too. Or terrified everyone around her was going to die.”
I picture Mom, eyes wide, hands trembling, trying to smile through fear that day in the car…the day that changed everything. The one fear she had…came true.
“And then she got pregnant with you,” he tells me, voice softer now. “And it was like…it was like she came back to life. Like she finally had something to hold onto again.”
I dig my fingers into my palm, trying not to get emotional thinking about my mom.
“And I hated her for it,” he tells me, lifting his gaze to me, giving me the raw honesty. “I hated that she could love again after Hailey. I hated that I couldn’t. I hated that she looked at you like you were what fixed everything.”
He lets out a breath like all this is a weight off his shoulders. “So I became a man who turned everything off,” he whispers. “And I made you suffer because of that decision.”
I stare at him for a long time.
I want to scream.
I want to stand up, flip the table, and tell him he doesn’t get to explain his way out of what he did to me. That it doesn’t erase anything. If anything, it makes it all so much worse.
I stand and just look at him—really look at him—and I feel something I never thought I’d feel. It’s not forgiveness, not even pity. Just…clarity.
“I came here because you asked,” I say. “That’s all you get.”
His lips part like he wants to beg for forgiveness, but I cut him off.
“My mother didn’t deserve what you did to her,” I say, and I hate how my voice shakes, but I let the emotions show. “And neither did I.”
He nods, tears still running down his face. “I know.”
I turn away before I can change my mind, before I can let the past get a hold of me and drag me back to those dark places like it did for so long.
I just keep walking out the door of the visiting area and out of the building, not letting myself leave any parts here with him. My life is waiting outside these walls. And it’s loud, and messy, and real. And it’s mine.
* * *
Every mile I drive home feels like it pushes the conversation with my dad further and further to the front of my mind. I feel like it’s trying to suffocate me, trying to reason with my empathy, trying to give him some leeway or excuse for what he made me into.
I don’t want to feel anything else for him.
All I can do is ask God to take the anger, take the confusion, take the emotions threatening to cause old wounds to bleed.
I have to be grateful, though. I feel like his confession gave me an answer to the one question I had for so long growing up. Why she stayed.
I can’t imagine what she felt back then.
Falling for someone and being so young and confused when you were thrown into motherhood, only to lose your child.
My heart breaks thinking about losing my little girl.
It would break me in unimaginable ways. Losing any of my kids would destroy the man I’ve worked so hard to become.
The tension in my body leaves as soon as our house at the end of the cul-de-sac comes into view. A smile creeps onto my face, seeing shadows move behind the curtains.
This is my sanctuary.