35. 2 Months Later
Chapter thirty-five
It takes the strength of a warrior for me not go back on anti-depressants. I mostly lean on Jess—who is kind enough to never say I told you so—and on work, along with twice-weekly talk therapy sessions.
And I draw a surprising amount of inspiration from one other, very unexpected person.
It’s a Monday morning, the first week of July, when I get the phone call from Aunt Lucy. “As promised, it’s early. Almost a year to the day,” she says. “Do you want to come with me to pick him up?”
I never would have considered making the trip to Massachusetts to greet my father upon his release from prison.
But, ever since my one-sided blowout with Matt, I’ve tried to see people differently.
There’s good and bad in all of us, my therapist reminds me.
So, much to my own surprise, I agree to take the train up to Lucy’s house and drive with her to MCI-Norfolk, a place I’ve only been once before.
“Are you nervous?” I ask Lucy as we wait in the parking lot.
“Yes,” Aunt Lucy admits. “It’s very strange. He only has three days to get back to New York to the halfway house they assigned him to. Doesn’t seem fair. He served his time, you know?”
“Transitional housing, it’s called,” I correct her. “And I think it’s supposed to help. Give him a place to stay while he gets back on his feet.”
Aunt Lucy sighs. “He could have stayed with me.”
“I know,” I say, patting her on the hand. “You’re too good.”
“All we can do is share the gifts bestowed upon us by the Lord,” she offers. “But what about you? Are you nervous, dear?”
I nod. “I haven’t seen him in fourteen years.”
“I’ll be with you the whole time. And I’ve seen him. He looks basically the same, just older.”
An alarm sounds, permeating the air with its shrill tenor.
The parking area is a small distance back from the actual prison, but moments later, I see my father walking away from the gray, lifeless building surrounded by iron gates and barbed wire.
“There he is,” I announce. His hair is white now, and he’s clean shaven.
He’s much thinner than he was when I was young.
His cheeks are sallow, and the sweatpants he’s been issued don’t fit very well.
He carries his personal effects in a brown paper bag, rolled at the top.
Lucy and I get out of the car. Lucy waves at him, and I call out, “Dad!”
He looks at our vehicle, then stops in his tracks.
I take a few steps in his direction. “Dad,” I say again, softer this time.
He shakes his head. “Oh my God,” I hear him say. Tears spring to the old man’s eyes. “Taylor?”
I nod. “It’s me.”
He covers his mouth with his free hand and lurches forward with a sob.
I approach him slowly, almost the way you’d approach a feral cat. “Hey,” I half-whisper. “Hey.” I place a hand on his shoulder.
“I can’t believe you came,” he whimpers.
“I’m here,” I reply, pulling him into a hug. My dad sobs openly into my shoulder as Lucy watches from just outside the car, dabbing at her own tears.
After several minutes, he tries to compose himself, his gasps making way for short, ragged breaths. He steps back from me and looks me over. “You’re so beautiful,” he says. “So grown up. Lucy showed me photos, but I never could have imagined you like this.”
I smile.
“You look like your mom,” he admits, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand. Wondering at my face, he marvels at the similarities. “My God, Taylor. You’re a spitting image of her.”
In my father’s features, I see the same emotions I’ve grown so accustomed to in myself.
Guilt. Regret. Sorrow. It never dawned on me that he might have actually been sorry for everything he did wrong.
I never thought about the pain he was going through; I only considered the pain he put the rest of us through.
It’s remarkably human, seeing my father this way.
“I have something for you,” he says.
My face twists in confusion at what it could be.
Dad opens his paper bag and rifles through it.
He produces a stack of marble notebooks and hands them to me.
“I wrote to you,” he says. “Every month was a month closer to getting out of there, and I marked it by writing you a letter. They’re all here.
” He gestures at the five notebooks. “It was supposed to be 180 letters, but I got out early.”
“Why didn’t you send them?” I ask, holding the stack to my chest.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t want to hear from me,” he replies.
I nod. The irony of how wrong he was hangs in the air around us. “Come see Auntie,” I say.
He smiles and follows me to the car, falling into an embrace with Lucy that hurts me to watch. Something dawns on me—catching me off guard entirely in its familiarity.
This is my family. Broken, bruised, and small as it may be, these are my people.
I’m not alone.
I think of Matt, Brett, and Leyla—and remember how often I felt like the Thompsons were the “right” kind of family.
I know better now.
An idea forms in the recesses of my mind.
Promise me, Mrs. Thompson had said, that you won’t leave when things get hard.
It took me two months to figure out how to keep that promise. But now, I know what I need to do.