The prison is not what I expected. And what was I expecting exactly? Something dark and rotting, set across a backdrop of grey skies and barren land? I don’t remember what I look like, but I do remember what a prison should look like. I laugh as I climb out of the car and smooth out my clothes. The red brick is bright against the blue sky. There are flowers growing along the grass, dancing a little when the breeze hits them. The only thing ugly about this setting is the barbed wire that runs across the top of the fence.
“This doesn’t look so bad,” I say.
Silas, who gets out behind me, raises an eyebrow. “You’re not the one locked in there.”
I feel warmth rise to my cheeks. I may not know who I am, but I do know that was an extremely stupid thing to say. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess Charlie is an asshole.”
He laughs and grabs my hand before I can protest. I glance back at the car where Janette and Landon are watching us through the side windows. They look like sad little puppies. “You should stay with them,” I say. “Teen pregnancy is a thing.”
He snickers. “Are you kidding me? Did you not see how they fought the whole way here?”
“Sexual tension,” I sing, as I swing open the door to the main reception area.
It smells like sweat. I crinkle my nose as I walk up to the window. A woman stands in front of me, a child tugging on each of her hands. She swears at them before barking her name at the receptionist and passing them her ID.
Shit. How old did you even have to be to visit someone in this place? I fumble for my driver’s license and wait my turn. Silas squeezes my hand and I turn to smile weakly at him.
“Next,” a voice calls. I step up to the window and tell a stern-faced woman who it is I’m here to see.
“Are you on the list?” she asks. I nod. The letters indicated that I had been to visit my father several times since he was incarcerated.
“What about him?” She nods toward Silas who produces his driver’s license.
She pushes back his ID and shakes her head. “He ain’t on the list.”
“Oh,” I say. It takes her a few minutes to get everything into the computer, and then she hands me a visitor’s badge.
“Leave your bag with your friend,” she says. “He can wait out here.”
I feel like screaming. I don’t want to go in there alone and talk to some man who’s supposed to be my father. Silas has his shit together. I want him to come with me.
“I don’t know that I can do this,” I say. “I don’t even know what to ask him.”
He grabs both of my shoulders and bends his head to look me in the eyes.
“Charlie, based on his manipulative letters, this guy seems like kind of an asshole. Don’t buy into his charm. Get answers and get out, okay?”
I nod. “Okay,” I say. I look around the dingy waiting area—the yellow walls and painfully-trying-too-hard potted plants. “You’ll be waiting out here?”
“Yeah,” he says, softly. He’s looking in my eyes, a slight grin on his lips. It’s making me feel like he wants to kiss me, and it freaks me out. Stranger danger. Except I already know what it feels like to kiss him. I just can’t remember.
“If it takes a while, you should go wait at the car with Landon and Janette,” I say. “You know…teen pregnancy and shit.”
He smiles reassuringly.
“Okay,” I say, taking a step back. “See ya on the other side.”
I’m trying to look big and bad as I walk through the metal detectors and a guard pats me down. My legs feel shaky. I look back at Silas, who is standing with his hands in his pockets, watching me. He nods his head to urge me forward, and I feel a little surge of bravery.
“I can do this,” I say under my breath. “Just a little visit with Daddy-o.”
I am taken to a room and told to wait. Twenty odd tables are scattered throughout. The woman who was in front of me in line is sitting at a table with her head in her hands while her kids play in a corner, stacking blocks. I sit as far away from them as possible and stare at the door. Any minute my so-called father is going to walk through those doors, and I don’t even know what he looks like. What if I get it wrong? I’m thinking about leaving, just running out and telling the others that he didn’t want to see me, when suddenly he walks in. I know it’s him because his eyes immediately find me. He smiles and walks over. Walks is not the word to describe what he does. He saunters. I don’t stand up.
“Hey, Peanut,” he says. He awkwardly hugs me as I sit stiff as a board.
“Hi…Dad.”
He slides into the seat across from me, still smiling. I can see how easy it would be to adore him. Even in his prison jumpsuit, he’s set apart. It looks all wrong—him being here with his bright white teeth and neatly combed blond hair. Janette was right. We must look just like our mother, because we don’t look anything like him. I have his mouth, I think. But not his pale skin tone. I don’t have his eyes. When I saw my picture, that’s the first thing I noticed. I have sad-looking eyes. He has laughing eyes, though he probably doesn’t have anything to laugh about. I’m lured in.
“You haven’t been here in two weeks,” he says. “I was beginning to think you girls just left me here to rot.”
I shrug off the daddy vibes I was getting a minute ago. Narcissistic prick. I can already tell how he works and I just met him. He says things with laughing eyes and a grin, but his words lash out like a whip.
“You left us destitute. The car is a problem, so it’s hard for me to drive this far. And my mother is an alcoholic. I think I’m mad at you for that, but I don’t remember.”
He stares at me for a minute, his smile frozen on his face. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” He folds his arms across the table and leans forward. He’s studying me. It makes me uncomfortable, like maybe he knows more about me than I know myself. Which is probably the case in my current situation.
“I got a phone call this morning,” he says, leaning back in his seat.
“Oh yeah? From who?”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter who it was from. What matters is what they told me. About you.”
I don’t offer him any information. I can’t tell if he’s baiting me.
“Is there anything you want to tell me, Charlize?”
I tilt my head. What kind of game is he playing? “No.”
He nods a little and then purses his lips together. His fingers come up in the form of a steeple under his chin while he stares across the table at me. “I was told you were caught trespassing onto someone’s property. And that there is reason to believe you’re under the influence of drugs.”
I take my time before I respond to him. Trespassing? Who would tell him I was trespassing? The tarot reader? It was her house I was in. To my knowledge, we didn’t tell anyone what had happened. We just went straight to the hotel last night, according to our notes.
So many things run through my mind. I try to sort through them all.
“Why were you on our old property, Charlie?”
My pulse begins to quicken. I stand up. “Is there anything to drink here?” I ask, spinning around in a circle. “I’m thirsty.” I spot the soda machine, but I don’t have any money on me. Just then, my father shoves his hand into his pocket and pulls out a handful of quarters. He slides them across the table.
“They let you have money here?”
He nods, eyeing me suspiciously the entire time. I grab the change and walk over to the soda machine. I insert the quarters and glance back at him. He’s not looking at me. He’s staring down at his hands folded together across the table.
I wait for my drink to plummet to the bottom, and even then, I stall another minute while I open it and take a sip. This man makes me nervous and I don’t know why. I don’t know how Charlie looked up to him like she did. I guess if I had memories of him as my father, maybe I would feel differently about him. But I don’t have memories. I can only go by what I’m seeing, and right now I see a criminal. A beady-eyed, pale excuse for a man.
I almost drop my soda. Every muscle in my body weakens with the realization. I think back to a description either me or Silas wrote in our notes. A physical description of The Shrimp. Of Cora.
“They call her The Shrimp because she has beady eyes and skin that turns ten shades of pink when she talks.”
Shit. Shit, Shit, Shit.
Brett is Cora’s father?
He’s staring at me now, probably wondering why it’s taking so long for me to make my way back to him. I head in his direction. When I reach the table, I eye him hard. Once I’m seated, I lean forward and don’t allow a single bit of my trepidation to seep through my confidence.
“Let’s play a game,” I tell him.
He raises an amused brow. “Okay.”
“Let’s pretend I’ve lost my memory. I’m a blank slate. I’m putting things together I may not have seen otherwise, in my prior adoration of you. Are you following…?”
“Not really,” he says. He looks sour. I wonder if he gets like this when people don’t fall all over themselves to please him.
“Did you happen to father another daughter? I don’t know, maybe one with a crazy mother who would hold me against my will?”
His face turns white. He immediately starts to deny, turns his body away from me, and calls me crazy. But I saw the panic on his face, and I know I’m on to something.
“Did you hear the last part of my sentence or are you just focused on keeping up appearances?” He turns his head to look at me, and this time his eyes are no longer soft. “She kidnapped me,” I say. “Kept me locked in a room in her—our—old house.”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. I think he’s deciding what to tell me.
“She found you trespassing on her property,” he says finally. “She said you were acting irate. You had no idea where you were. She didn’t want to call the police because she’s convinced you’re doing drugs, so she kept you to help you detox. She had my permission, Charlie. She called me as soon as she found you in her house.”
“I’m not on drugs,” I tell him. “And who in their right mind would hold someone against their will?”
“Would you rather she called the police on you? You were talking crazy! And you broke into her house in the middle of the night!”
I don’t know what to believe right now. The only memory of that experience I have is in the notes I wrote to myself.
“And that girl is my half-sister? Cora?”
He stares at the tabletop, unable to meet my eyes. When he doesn’t respond, I decide to play his game. “It’s in your best interest to be honest with me. Silas and I came across a file that Clark Nash has been desperately searching for since before your trial.”
He doesn’t even flinch. His poker face is too perfect. He doesn’t ask me what file I have. He just says, “Yes. She’s your half-sister. I had an affair with her mother years ago.”
It’s like this is all happening to a character on a television show. I wonder how the real Charlie would take this. Burst into tears? Get up and run out? Punch this dude in the face? From what I’ve read of her, probably the latter.
“Wow. Oh, wow. Does my mother know?”
“Yes. She found out after we lost the house.”
What a sorry excuse for a man. First, he cheats on my mother. Impregnates another woman. Then he hides it from his wife and kids until he gets caught?
“God,” I say. “No wonder she’s an alcoholic.” I lean back in my seat and stare up at the ceiling. “You never claimed her? Does the girl know?”
“She knows,” he says.
I feel hot anger. For Charlie, for this poor girl who has to go to school with Charlie and watch her live the life she didn’t get to have, and for this whole screwed up situation.
I take a moment to gather myself while he sits in silence. I wish I could say he was wallowing in guilt, but I’m not so sure this man is capable of feeling guilt.
“Why do they live in the house I grew up in? Did you give it to them?”
This question turns him a light shade of pink. He pops his jaw as his eyes dart left to right. His voice is quieter when he speaks, so that only I can hear him. “That woman was a client of mine, Charlie. And a mistake. I broke it off with her years ago, a month before she found out she was pregnant. We came to an agreement of sorts. That I would be present financially, but nothing else. It was better for everyone that way.”
“So what you’re saying is, you bought her silence?”
“Charlie…” he says. “I made a mistake. Believe me, I’ve paid for it tenfold. She used the money I’d been sending her all those years to purchase our old house in auction. She did that just to spite me.”
So she’s vindictive. And maybe a little bit crazy. And my father is to blame for that?
Jesus. This just gets worse and worse.
“Did you do what they say you did?” I ask him. “Since we’re telling the truth, I think I have a right to know.”
His eyes dart around the room again to see who’s listening.
“Why are you asking all of these questions?” he whispers. “This isn’t like you.”
“I’m seventeen years old. I think I have the right to change.” This guy. I want to roll my eyes at him, but first I need him to give me more answers.
“Did Clark Nash put you up to this?” he asks, leaning forward with accusation in both his words and his expression. “Are you involved with Silas again?”
He’s trying to turn it around on me. He can’t get to me anymore.
“Yes, Daddy,” I say, smiling sweetly. “I’m involved with Silas again. And we’re in love and very happy. Thank you for asking.”
Veins bulge at his temples. His hands tighten into angry fists. “Charlie, you know what I think about that.”
His reaction sets me off. I stand up and my chair scoots back with a screech. “Let me tell you what I think, Dad.” I take a step away from the table and point at him. “You’ve ruined a lot of lives. You thought money could take the place of your responsibilities. Your choices drove my mother to drinking. You left your own daughters with nothing, not even a role model in their lives. Not to mention all the people you swindled money from in your company. And you blame everyone else. Because you’re a really shitty human. And an even shittier father!” I say. “I don’t know Charlie and Janette very well, but I think they deserve better.”
I turn and walk away, tossing a couple of final words over my shoulder. “Goodbye, Brett! Have a nice life!”