“Kate?” her father prodded. He stood beside her, tall and lean, the handsomest man she knew. He wore a navy-and-black houndstooth jacket from Allen Collins, gray flannels, and loafers without socks. He had a narrow face with a crooked nose and deeply sensitive hazel eyes always ready to smile. His hair was short and full, brown with white starting to come in. Silver threads among the gold, he would joke.
“Her fondest wish is to get out of the bed and run,” Kate said. “And do something exciting.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. “You still think it’s a hope chest?”
“It’s a blanket chest. For when the nights get cold. When it’s winter.”
“That’s what I think too,” he said.
They always had lunch at the Hartford Club, with its brick facade and arched windows, just across Prospect Street from the Atheneum. He seemed proud to show her off—she’d wear a dress, and he’d ask people if they didn’t think she had long legs like a thoroughbred. She had often been conscious of thinking she had been lucky to be there alone with him, that he’d taken her and not their mother or Beth, but it had made her feel guilty at the same time.
Speeding past the Colt Armory with its dark-blue star-dazzled dome and the ghosts of makers of firearms, she couldn’t help glancing at the Hartford skyline, trying in a split second to locate the museum and the club. Memories flooded into her just like the dam her dad had told her about that had broken in 1936, nearly washed away Hartford and his parents’ home, drowned an aunt he’d never meet. He had grown up with the family’s legacy and fear and hatred of that flood and all it had taken.
“We’re getting closer,” Kate said to Lulu.
“Are you okay?” Lulu asked.
“Yes.”
“Because it seems like you might not be. In fact, how could you be? It’s a big deal seeing him.”
As she listened to Lulu’s words, Kate’s heart began to harden again. To purposely do without someone you loved was a big deal. But so was setting in motion a crime that would destroy his family.
She took one of the last exits before the Massachusetts border. The maximum-security prison was set back from a main road, down a long driveway. Two rows of tall anchor fences topped with triple coils of razor wire surrounded the premises. The visitors’ parking lot was clearly marked. It was crowded, but Kate noticed a steady stream of people, mostly women, leaving the building, getting into their cars. Kate imagined them visiting husbands, boyfriends, sons, fathers—all incarcerated just like her father.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Kate said, staring at the brick building. “The procedures. I should have called to see about visiting hours.”
“I’m sure they’ll tell you when you get to the door,” Lulu said. “Are you nervous?”
Kate nodded.
Lulu hugged her hard. “I’ll wait in the car,” she said. “Take your time.”
Kate walked down a sidewalk, past a sign:
NO WEAPONS
NO CELL PHONES
MODEST DRESS
Despite the number of people leaving, there was a line, again mostly women, many holding grocery bags. One by one they went through metal detectors. Correctional officers stood talking to each other while watching the visitors enter.
“Who are you visiting?” a guard at the desk asked Kate.
“Garth Woodward,” she said.
“Your name?”
“Kate Woodward,” she said, watching him scan a computer screen. “Why?”
“You have to be on his visitors list.”
“I’m not,” she said.
“Then you can’t visit till you are.”
Kate wanted to argue with him, but she knew there was no point. Frustrated, she turned to go.
“Wait,” the guard said. “Katharine Woodward?”
“Yes.”
“You’re on here.” He handed her a pass and directed her to Garth’s cellblock.
She swallowed hard, walking through the metal detector. She hadn’t visited, written, or called for twenty-three years, but he’d kept her name on his list. She and the other women walked through a series of metal doors, one clanging shut behind them before the next opened. Correctional officers inspected the grocery bags, rifling through them. Kate heard potato chips crunch and break as one guard pawed through a woman’s bag roughly.
“Hey,” the woman said. “Don’t bust them.”
“What’s the difference? He’s going to eat them anyway.”
The woman turned to Kate, anger in her eyes.
“No respect here, none.”
“No talking!” a different guard barked.
It took thirty minutes to get from the prison’s front entrance to the last metal door.
A massive guard stood in the middle of the corridor, making the women go around him. He had the neck of a bodybuilder and the gut of a lazy slob. His brown hair was slicked back, his complexion sallow. He watched the women pass with half-lidded eyes, like a frog waiting to lap up a fly. His left thumb was hooked into his belt, his fingers dangling down the front of his pants.
The visiting room was full. Prisoners in bright-yellow uniforms sat facing their visitors across long tables that reminded Kate of the soup kitchen. Many of the men had tattooed arms and necks. Kate wondered what they had done to land here. She felt sick at the idea of a criminal from Ainsworth worming his way into Beth’s life.
Guards were stationed around the room, keeping watch. The door guard had followed the women in. Kate could barely breathe. She looked at all the faces, wondering if she’d even recognize her father. She thought maybe he was still in his cell, but in the half hour since she’d signed in, she saw the guards had gotten him.
He saw her approach and stood.
She held back a gasp. He was old. Her tall, handsome father was stooped and gray. His skin was pale; he had a white scar on his forehead. But he was beaming, his smile at the sight of her as delighted as ever. When she got close, she had to hold herself back from crashing into him with a hug.
“I never thought you’d come,” he said.
“Neither did I,” she said.
They stood facing each other for a minute, till a guard approached them and gestured to keep a distance apart, sit down on opposite sides of the table. Kate tried to keep her face from crumpling, but it was a losing battle. She felt like a little kid whose heart had been broken. She stared into her father’s hazel eyes, saw all the love and pride he’d always felt for her, thought of all the years he’d stolen from them.
“My name was on your list,” she said.
“I know, Katy. I never gave up hoping.”
“You probably should have,” she said.
“But I didn’t.”
She looked at his hands. Gnarled and veined, they were flat on the table, as if he wanted to reach across and take hers, reassure her like he used to when she was a little girl, let her know that everything would be all right. He’d been the best father ever, until he wasn’t.
“What happened to your forehead?” she asked.
“A fight,” he said. “Years ago, when I first arrived.”
“You fight in here?” she asked harshly.
“No,” he said. “I got beaten for what I did to you and Beth. People here don’t like fathers hurting their children.”