Chapter 5
FIVE
HARPER
Another loud alarm beeps, and then the heavy metal door swings open, allowing me into the last room of the prison—at least the last door civilians are allowed past.
Into the visitors’ room.
I hurry inside and sit down on the cold little chair in front of the half-frosted glass.
It’s the closest I’m allowed to get to breathing the same air as my father these days, three years after he took the fall in my place for a locker full of drugs that didn’t belong to either of us.
The place is so damn dreary I always try to bring in something to brighten it, but they confiscated my flowers at the entrance even though I’m sure the x-ray proved there was nothing more harmful than stems in the bundle. I was even careful not to get roses or any other thorny-stemmed flower.
At least Bruiser’s drawings made it through. The colorful construction paper is something to brighten the dreariness in here. I can’t say the kid inherited my artistic talent, though.
I’ve thought about bringing Bruiser himself, but Dad always nixes the thought, saying he doesn’t want any grandkid of his ever seeing the inside of a correctional facility, even if it’s just the visitors’ side. So I bring toddler crayon drawings instead.
As soon as Dad appears on the other side of the glass, I pull the drawings out of the little folder anyway, slap on a smile, and show them to him.
“Bruiser made these for you,” I say, forcing cheer into my voice that I don’t feel.
The whole point is to be a bright beacon of hope when I come.
I press Bruiser’s latest polygonal creation—the kid is fascinated with angles, I’ll give him that—to the glass and am about to make my cheery intro, going on and on about how Bruiser’s been growing like a weed again.
At two and a half years old, it’s all true, but my eye catches on the yellowing bruise on Dad’s eye.
Bruiser’s drawing drops from my hands as my fingers press to the glass. “Dad, are you okay? What happened?”
His head ducks, big fist trying to cover the offending eye as he shakes his head. “Aw nothing. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, darlin’. You were sayin’ about Bruiser? Something about him picking weeds?”
“No, he’s growing like a weed. And Dad, it’s not nothing if you’ve been getting into fights again!
How’s that going to look at your next parole hearing?
” I can’t help tossing my hands up in frustration.
We’ve been working on this for months, and it’s all based on good behavior. And now he goes and gets into a fight!
“I’m sorry kid, I know you were hoping that’s how it would go, but there was no real chance with that, anyway. Just like the one before. And the one before that.”
“Don’t say that! There’s still hope!”
I press my palm to the glass.
But Silas just shrugs, his body language real closed off.
“I gotta start living like this is reality now. I know how to survive this place, but you gotta play by its rules. Totally different set than the world out there’s got.
There’s a hierarchy system in here and they’re over me playing the field.
I managed to avoid those white supremacist motherfuckers, but I had to make some other compromises so I don’t become roadkill myself. ”
Every word out of his mouth makes my stomach sink a little further.
He did this for me.
He’s enduring this so I never have to learn the “different set of rules” behind the concrete walls of a correctional facility.
“So you pledged yourself to someone, and it got you all those bruises? I thought you were walking a little stiffer as you sat down.”
He just shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Spent some time in solitary. No big deal. Just doing one of the bosses a favor that should get me set up for a minute.”
I breathe out harshly. I hate this, but at least he’s telling me. I’d hate it worse if he was trying to protect me from the reality of what was actually going on.
He knows I can handle the truth.
“Do you do okay in solitary?” I ask. “Like, are you taking care of your mental health? Do you have a self-care routine?”
I’ve read horror stories. I’ve started reading all I can about guys on the inside and how they can be supported. I always make sure he’s got money in his commissary and get him any special requests.
He looks at me deadpan. “I use it as a meditative retreat.”
I can’t tell if he’s serious or taking the piss. Pretty sure it’s the latter.
“Dad…”
“Daughter…” he says mockingly back, and I shake my head, knowing he won’t talk about it anymore.
So I move on to the second most painful topic I often can’t help bringing up when I visit.
“Have you heard from… him?”
Silas sits stone-faced, shaking his head. “You know I sent him a letter telling him it’s best if he stays away.”
I look down. I don’t understand Dad sometimes. Most times, clearly. He tried to “protect” me most of my life by keeping me at a distance, too.
“Why? I know things between him and me—” My eyes drop to my hands that twist anxiously in my lap.
“Ended bad,” I finish, “But things between the two of you were always good. I know you love him as if he was your own son.”
I finally muster the courage to look back up at him, only to see pain carved in his brow.
He swallows hard before answering, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “He’s a good boy. I always wanted the best for him. And the best ain’t having me in his life.”
I frown as he continues.
“It’d be the best thing for you, too, if I made you stop visiting.”
My mouth drops open. “Don’t you d—”
He cuts me off, “But I guess after a life of pushing you away, kiddo, an old man gets weak. Your visits and showing me these damn pictures that kid of yours draws help keep me going, if I’m honest.”
My hands twist even tighter underneath the table, and I can’t keep holding my dad’s gaze. I don’t know what to do with him saying such sentimental things to me. We barely said I love you before my senior year in high school. That’s never how it was between us.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you told him to stay away since he’s off at Harvard anyway,” I finally manage to say.
I expect that to be the final word on the matter, but then Silas’s deep voice sounds through the phone: “Don’t think so.”
My eyes flash back up to his, and I can’t help sitting up straighter in the uncomfortable metal chair. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t think he’s at Harvard.”
“Why not?”
My heartbeat hiccups in my chest. Dad was notified Helen died not long after he went in—not that he told me that until a year later, after the baby was born.
I couldn’t do anything about it then, but I told myself Caleb would be coping, probably drowning his sorrows in college life and his studies.
I was in no position to track him down and say how sorry I was for missing the funeral. For everything.
What was I going to do at that point? Send a Facebook friend request saying I’m so sorry for your loss? Oh, and here’s my four-week-old baby that’s not yours?
“Cause of the mail I get,” Silas says.
“So he is writing you?” My back goes ramrod straight, no doubt showing my interest in spite of my determination to look cool and uninterested.
But Silas just gives one, clipped shake of his head. “It’s just the bills I been getting for the club. I figured he got a manager for the place because the bills still just had me and Helen’s name on them for the longest.
“But now it’s the manager’s name coming through on the bills that make their way to me, since I’m still the owner.”
I frown, shaking my head. So what? I don’t get it.
“It’s Caleb’s name on the bills. I don’t think he ever went to Harvard. He took over at the club instead.”
I can only stare at Silas while my mind swirls a mile a minute.
No. There’s no way. Caleb had Harvard, what would probably be a full ride, all laid out before him.
Yeah, the high school bitch who got my dad put away by planting weed in my locker added a little bump in the road by outing Caleb’s and my relationship, but that would have been nothing to a resourceful guy like Caleb; he could’ve gotten that cleared up easy.
The only solace in my shitty life the past three years besides Bruiser has been imagining Caleb off at college living it up and preparing to become America’s future badass lawyer just like he always dreamed of being.
“No,” I try to shrug it off. “No. Harvard was all he cared about. Preparing to go there was his whole identity.”
I leap up out of my chair, the phone still barely held in my hand. Knowing what I know now—that Helen died within days of my leaving—I’m still not sure about the timeline… But it was, like, really soon after.
Caleb would’ve been devastated by losing everything—his mom, Silas, and me, all in one fell swoop. It was his worst fear.
If only I’d stayed.
The cancer meds might have been affecting Helen’s mind. She might not have even meant what she’d said.
If only I hadn’t fucked Z that night in the hotel.
But Jesus, how can I say that? Am I saying I wouldn’t have wanted my son? The light of my life?
I feel so guilty and wrong every-which-way I turn.
And so, so ashamed.
I swallow hard. “Oh my God, he lost everything.”
It fully sinks in. Instead of going off to Harvard and his promising career, Caleb took over management of some… some downtown Dallas sex dungeon.
I literally cannot even fathom it.
All Caleb’s friends were set for the Ivy League, too. Couldn’t they have helped him? My eyes dart back and forth, searching for answers.
But of course, no answers are to be found in the dirty metal of this prison visiting room.
My fury turns back on my father—well, not at him. But at the circumstances.
“You don’t belong in here. You’re an innocent man!”
Silas gives me a sardonic look, one eyebrow hefted. “We both know that’s not true. I might not have done this particular wrong, but I’m far from an innocent man. As far as I see, I’m just reaping what I sowed.”
He leans forward on his elbows. “Harper, I failed you in ways that are unforgivable. If karma saw fit to revisit my sins on me in this life—well, that’s a little less hell I’ll have to pay in the next.”
“Dammit, stop being so—” I tear up and reach out—only for my knuckles to bang into glass. I cling to the phone instead.
“Whatever you did wrong, you’ve more than made up for. I forgive you. You proved to me that people can change.”
The big man starts to tear up right as the guard comes to get him, while I’m in no mood for leaving.
“I love you, Dad,” I cry into the phone as he’s forced to drop his when the guard pulls him back roughly from the chair.
“Love you, too, kid.” His shout as he’s carried away still echoes in my head as I stumble back toward the waiting room.
How long will he have to survive behind these walls, and what other sacrifices will he have to make along the way?