Rose
"Are you sure about this?" I ask myself out loud.
That's where I am in my healing journey now. Conversations with myself. Self-reflection. Self-accountability.
"Self," I say to myself, "we're doing this."
"Ma'am."
I look up to the burly security officer waving a hand at me from the other side of the metal detector.
"While I'm glad you've convinced yourself there, can you walk through the metal detector, please? You're holding up the line."
Right.
Prison.
I take off my backpack, place it in the bin and step through. I only half-listen as she runs me through the rules about where to wait, where to enter the visiting area and the limits on physical contact.
"I won't be touching him," I tell her, probably a little too aggressively. "It's not that kind of visit."
"I don't really care, lady. I'm just giving you the instructions. Walk through that door to your left and wait for your name to be called."
Well.
Good talk.
I've never visited anyone in prison before, and I'm not sure what I expected.
Families are everywhere. Kids bored in plastic chairs, a few younger ones running around while their parents repeatedly tell them to sit down.
People checking their phones. Guards calling names.
Fluorescent lights humming overhead and a constant stream of PA announcements nobody seems to be listening to.
It's disturbingly normal.
I wipe my palms against my jeans for what has to be the fiftieth time.
"Rosalie Bennett for Wesley Finnegan, V82910453."
My heartbeat kicks hard enough that I can feel it in my ears.
I walk to the glass window and hand over my pass and ID. Some absurd part of me wants the woman behind it to look at me. Really look. See what it took to get me through those doors and tell me I'll be okay, that I won't walk back out of here with less of myself than I brought in.
She doesn't even make eye contact.
I'm another visitor. Another name. Another number attached to another inmate.
She finishes whatever she's writing, types into her computer and slides everything back.
"Through the door on the right, down the hall, wait at the second checkpoint."
And I'm dismissed.
I'm screaming inside.
Why the fuck did I come here?
Closure?
For what?
My feet keep moving anyway. Down the hall, through the second checkpoint, where I trade my pass for a visitor badge. Another officer opens the door and directs me inside.
I choose a table. Then I wait.
My leg bounces so hard I'm probably shaking the damn thing, but the moment Wesley walks into the room, my entire body stops.
For one breath, I'm right back there.
His eyes move over me, and it doesn't matter that I deliberately wore the largest clothes I own.
I can feel that gaze getting underneath them anyway, and suddenly I'm not thirty-nine and sitting in a prison visiting room.
I'm that terrified twenty-something woman again, screaming and crying and bleeding while he takes whatever the fuck he wants.
I grip the edge of the chair.
No.
Not today.
"Well. This is unexpected."
His voice is rougher than I remember. He's only been in here a couple of months, but he already looks worse than he did during the trial. Thinner. Older. The expensive polish is gone.
I beg my body to cooperate. My mouth to work. I will not give this man the satisfaction of watching me fall apart in front of him again.
"How are they treating you in here?"
The voice that comes out doesn't sound like mine. I'm too far away from myself again, watching the conversation instead of sitting inside it.
"Is that what you came all this way to ask?"
"Humor me, Wes." I lean forward and rest my forearms on the table. "I've heard stories about how they treat men who harm women in here." I pause. "Have they taken your virginity yet?"
His eyes narrow. His jaw starts ticking while he stares at me in silence.
Interesting.
“I was just kidding around because of the rumors, but damn, I guess that part is true.”
“I never said that. And it’s not fucking true. Get to the point of why you’re here, Rosie.”
"You don't get to call me that," I growl, my palm slamming down on the table hard enough that the crack turns heads and gets the nearby officer's attention.
And just like that, I'm back in my body. My palm stings. My heart is pounding. Wesley Finnegan is sitting across from me in prison clothes, and there are officers twenty feet away.
He can't hurt me.
Not here. Not anymore.
I take a deep breath and lean back, and for the first time since he walked into the room, I don't have to remind myself where I am.
"I needed to know I could do it. That I could walk into a room where you exist and walk back out with every piece of myself I brought in."
His face changes. Just a flicker, but I catch it.
I stand, because that's it. I got exactly what I came for. I don't need an apology from him. I don't need an explanation. There is nothing this man can give me that I didn't just take back for myself.
"I didn't come here to offer you absolution.
Forgiveness. Peace. I'm not that type of Christian.
" I straighten my shirt. "I came to bring you fire and brimstone.
I came so my face will haunt your dreams. So my screams wake you up at night wondering whether I know the right people in here, with the right connections, to make sure any uhh…
accidents you have are viewed as exactly that.
Accidents. Casualties of circumstance, if you will. "
His eyes widen and immediately dart toward the officers. He's hoping, I'm sure, that somebody caught the threat behind my words.
Nobody did.
I made certain of how I said it.
"You can't... You don't get to..."
I lean toward him just enough to make sure he hears every word.
"Shhh. Now, now. Don't be scared, Wes." I give him a soft smile. "Rosie's going to take real good care of you from now on. Now that I know you're such a good fucking boy."
His face drains.
I let myself enjoy the tremble in his hands for one second. One. Then I'm done with him.
"Sleep well, Wesley."
I turn toward the door.
"I know I will."
***
"Well... uh." Dr. Knowles places her pen and pad down and pinches the bridge of her nose. "I understand that this was a breakthrough. A monumental one."
"Yeah?" I smile and bounce a little in my seat while she tries to take all of it in. "It definitely was. I'm vibrating. Look." I hold out my hand, which has been trembling with excitement since I walked out of that prison this morning. "This is good, right?"
"Here's the thing." She folds her hands in her lap and looks at me with the careful patience of a woman trying to figure out which part of this conversation to address first. "You kind of threatened his life."
"Yeah?"
She waits for me to elaborate, so I wait for her to elaborate, and after several seconds of us reaching an impasse, I raise my eyebrows.
"Yeahhhh? I wouldn't actually have him killed or anything.
I just wanted him sweating bullets thinking I would, you know?
" I wave a hand because this feels like a fairly important distinction.
"Plus, the only guy I know who could actually pull it off is in a different prison, and he doesn't have connections to any of the gangs where Wesley is.
Now, Jade might know a few people if I really wanted to dig into the idea, but it wouldn't be, you know, murder-death-kill.
Just a few broken bones. Stuff like that. "
Dr. Knowles's mouth slowly falls open.
I wait for the professional assessment.
Nothing.
"Good, right?"
"Rosalie, you understand that everything you said after I wouldn't actually have him killed made this considerably worse?"
"Did it?" I think back over the statement. "I thought the different-prison part showed a healthy separation between fantasy and available resources."
Her eyes close briefly.
Okay. Maybe not.
"What I am saying is that walking into that prison voluntarily, sitting across from the man who assaulted you, and remaining grounded enough to leave on your own terms is significant.
You went there because you needed to prove to yourself that he no longer had the power to pull you out of your own body, and you did that. "
My smile spreads wider. "So good."
"That part was good."
"Excellent."
"The threat was not."
"Okay, but if we're weighing the categories, I feel like breakthrough should count for significantly more than one little threat."
She stares at me.
I stare back.
Finally, she sighs deeply and leans into her chair with a weary expression of realization that this may be the best outcome she's getting today. "Yes, Rosalie. Overall, it was good."
I clap once. "Yes! It's good. It's goooood."
I reach for my coffee and take another drink while she watches me with increasing suspicion.
"How much coffee have you had today?"
I glance down at the cup.
"Four."
"Cups?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"This morning."
She nods slowly, and suddenly the clinical concern on her face has shifted departments.
I look at my trembling hand again.
Huh.
Maybe that's why I'm vibrating.