How poetic.
We finish checking out a few minutes later and head to the parking lot. My mother is abnormally quiet today. Either she doesn’t know what to say or she’s still in shock from the initial discovery of “my situation.”
“Are you still going to work?” she asks. “After … what just happened?”
“I am.” I don’t have a choice. I’m three weeks into this job.
“You’re a lot stronger than I give you credit for,” she says, her smile bittersweet as she rubs my arm. “I’ll see you tonight?”
I nod, and she wraps her lithe arms around me before heading toward her car on the other side of the parking lot.
It’s a fifteen-minute drive from here to work, but by the time I get there, I have no recollection of having driven at all.
This entire morning has been a strange blur. The future I’m looking at now is very different from the one I was looking at when I first woke up a couple of hours ago. It’s funny how quickly life can change.
While this pregnancy was unexpected, the tiniest part of me was growing more excited with each passing day … even looking forward to meeting the little babe when the time came.
And now … they’re going to go in and remove it.
Like it’s some kind of tumor.
I head into the lab, stomach swirling, head pounding, heart breaking.
My veins flood with a cocktail of grief, relief, and then guilt. When I board the elevator to my floor, I feel nothing at all.
For the rest of the day it comes in waves—one minute I feel everything.
The next minute I feel numb.
Some minutes I don’t know what I feel.
It’s almost like I’m broken—like that butterfly Madden caught as a child and set free.
Forty-Six
Madden
* * *
Another full weekend of silence.
I won’t say I don’t deserve it, but I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Even if she’d text me to tell me she hates my fucking guts, at least it’d be something.
Despite the fact that I miss her like hell, I just want to know she’s okay.
Dragging myself out of bed Monday morning, I get cleaned up and head down to the coffee shop on the corner to grab a drink and a bite to eat, and on my way back, I check the mail. It’s mostly junk, as per usual—until I get to the last piece: another letter from my dad.
I’m not sure what compels me to open this one. Most of the time I toss them in the garbage without a second thought, but I rip the side of the envelope and unfold the single sheet of lined paper.
* * *
Son
* * *
I know I don’t deserve your time, but it would mean the world to me if you could come down for a short visit. There’s something I want to tell you. Something I’ve wanted to tell you for years. And if you hear me out, I’ll never bother you again.
Love,
Dad
* * *
I chuckle at the fact that the bastard had the audacity to toss the word “love” in there when he never once said it to any of us when he was a free man.
Guess he’s had a lot of time to think too …
I give the letter another read.
And another.
As much as I don’t want to see him, I do want to know what he needs to tell me.
With a resigned sigh and nothing more to lose, I grab my phone and look up visiting hours at the Wheatonville Penitentiary.
I sign in at the visitor’s desk Monday afternoon and take a seat in the waiting area until someone calls to take me back. When I woke up this morning, the last place I planned to be was here, visiting a man I haven’t seen in over a decade, but I’m here now and it’s happening.
“Madden Ransom?” A man dressed in head-to-toe light brown calls for me from behind a secured door. I follow him back to a room lined with semi-private sections and payphone-looking receivers separated by thick glass partitions, exactly the kind of thing you see in the movies.
The guard leads me down a ways, and as we get closer to the end, I spot my father before he spots me.
I’m not sure why I expected him to look exactly the same as he did before, but the only thing I recognize are his dark, hooded eyes. His hair has turned from inky black to silvery gray, and he’s much paler than he was before. No more of that blue collar glow he used to sport from his days spent delivering mail.
That’s right.
Before he became a cold-blooded killer, he was your friendly neighborhood postal worker.
I take the seat across from him and lift the receiver. He grabs his.
“Madden,” he says, beaming like a proud father. “Look at you.”
I’m sure my change in appearance is just as drastic as his. The last time he saw me, I was sixteen. Tall and scrawny. Longer hair. Attitude of a rebellious punk (though that part hasn’t changed much).
“All right,” I say. I don’t have time to sit here and shoot the shit, nor do I care to. “You got me here. What’d you want to tell me?”
He offers a tender smile, which is an ironic look on a hardened criminal, and then he cups his receiver with both hands.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” he says.
I keep a straight face despite the fact that I’m annoyed as hell. He made me come all the way here just so he could apologize?
He couldn’t have done it in a letter?
“Okay. Well. Good talk.” I rap my knuckles against the table and hang up the phone.
He motions for me to pick it up again.
For whatever reason, I oblige.
I blame curiosity.
“Don’t go yet,” he says, an air of desperation in his voice.
“I’ve got work to do,” I say. It occurs to me that he probably doesn’t know what I do for a living. As far as I know, Mom hasn’t visited him but once since he got locked up, and that was only to get him to sign the divorce papers. She won’t let Dev see him because she claims she’s too young to understand, but I think she just doesn’t want to make the time to take her.
“Come on.” He chuckles. “Surely you have a few more minutes for your old man. You came all this way …”
Exhaling, I say. “All right. Fine. Since I came all this way, I do have one question I’ve always wanted to ask you.”
“Of course. Ask me anything.” He nods like an eager-to-please puppy. Not a good look for him.
“Why’d you do it?”
His eager expression disappears, replaced with furrowed brows and hard lines.
“Son, if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” he says.
He’s probably right.
“Try me,” I say. “I’m willing to listen.”
My father clears his throat. “Jesus. Okay. Where do I start?”
I listen intently as my father tells me his version of events … and he’s right. I don’t believe him—at first.
And then it all makes perfect sense.
When I leave the prison, I make a detour to Park Terrace—to the office of Charles Karrington, President and CEO of Monarch Pharmaceuticals.