by Jordan, Drew
It was Dean who cried when I was led into the visitor’s room at the federal prison, not me, surprisingly. He was sitting at a table waiting for me and when he saw me, he stood up, swiping at his eyes. I smiled and waved and went right up to him, letting him hug me. I hadn’t seen him in months and it felt good to feel his familiar embrace, though oddly, he seemed smaller to me than he had before. Skinnier, more fragile. But maybe that was because I had gotten used to the stranger and his hard, large frame.
“Hi,” I said, pulling back to look at him. “It’s good to see you.”
He gave a relieved laugh. “You have no idea how good it is to see you. I thought you were dead. I can’t believe you survived a plane crash. That’s insane.”
“I must have nine lives.” I caught the guard out of the corner of my eye. He was gesturing for us to move apart, so I sat down.
Dean did the same, his hands trembling slightly. “You look thin,” he said.
“So do you.”
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Physically and emotionally?”
That was a difficult question, because how did I explain what I was struggling with? The need to be loved warring with the need to give love to Victoria? The struggle to reconcile how I could be so selfish as to do what I’d done to Dean and to Michael? It was all so complicated, so many emotions and actions woven together into a chaotic riotous choking spider web.
“I’m okay. I didn’t have major physical injuries. I think emotionally, I have some things to work out. I’m trying to be more honest with myself.” I bit my fingernail. “With you.”
“I guess at some point we need to talk about the things we never talk about, huh?” Dean said, his smile sad, his hand reaching out to cover mine.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, and I truly meant it. “I have a hard time getting back into my head then and understanding why I did what I did, but I was just scared I was going to lose you. That you’d stop loving me, or you and Mom would divorce and I’d never see you again. I wanted you to be mine. Not hers. She didn’t deserve you.”
Damn it. I had tears in my eyes and I hadn’t wanted to do that. To cry or to bring my mother into it. Why the hell was it always about her? But Dean looked old and tired and small sitting across the table from me in his beige jumpsuit, reading glasses tucked into the neck of his undershirt. Being so close to him, having him rest his hand over mine, was nostalgic and wonderful. I felt twelve and cared for again, but also vulnerable and worried.
“You weren’t going to lose me,” he said, his voice sounding weary. “Even if your mother and I divorced, I wasn’t going to be cut out of your life. I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
“You know how she is,” I reminded him. “She would have hidden me just to torment both of us. You know that.”
His fingers jerked on my hand. “Yeah. That’s probably true. But you were a kid and I was an adult. I knew better, so you don’t need to apologize.”
“Just accept my apology. Or actually, you’re not obligated to accept my apology, but just know that I mean it, sincerely.” I did. The last thing in the world I had meant to do was to hurt the one person who had cared about me.
“I know, sweetheart, I know.” He rubbed at his eyes with his free hand.
“Why did you marry her?” I asked, genuinely curious. I wanted to add that she was a lying bitchface who was a completely selfish asshole but that wouldn’t set the right tone for him to be honest with me. I wanted the truth, not his defensiveness. It was something I had always wondered about. What had lured him might be obvious, but what had kept him?
He pulled his hand away from mine fully and scratched his chin, where he had gray stubble. His movements were more restless than I was used to. He had always seemed so in control of himself. “Do you really want the truth?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “I’m not going to get upset. I just want to know how she ended up with a man like you.” Why did bitches steal all the good guys?
“Your mother was a good time. I don’t think I have to tell you that. I met her, she was fun, we laughed a lot. Plus you know what they say-crazy women are great in bed.”
That made me smirk, just a little. “No, I hadn’t heard that.” But it wasn’t hard to imagine there was truth to it. Maybe Michael had thought I would be a good time.
No. Michael had felt sorry for me. No one felt sorry for a woman like my mother.
“She was bigger than life. And yes, she was also a bitch and selfish and addicted to any number of things, but by then she had one thing I couldn’t walk away from.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted more details on my mother’s magical vagina, but I asked anyway. “What?”
“You.”
My vision instantly blurred and I swallowed hard. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“I mean that once I met you, and saw how she treated you, and saw how you were still so sweet and innocent and sorrowful, I couldn’t have lived with myself if I just drifted away from her after a few weeks or months like I’d originally been intending to.” Dean leaned forward, so jarringly quick that the guard frowned and gave him a gesture to sit back. He complied but his voice was earnest. “I stayed for you, Laney, and no other reason. I wanted to be your father. I felt like your father.”
That was all I had ever needed or wanted to hear. It felt like absolution. Relief that he hadn’t loved my mother despite her egregious flaws, because she hadn’t done anything to deserve his love. He had loved me. I nodded, throat too tight to speak.
“What I did to you was so wrong,” he said, before pausing to clear his throat with a rough cough. “We broke a barrier that we never should have and I will regret that until the day I die.”
Even though I knew he regretted it, that it made him feel weak, I still hated hearing it. But for the first time ever, I felt strong enough to accept that. “I regret that I didn’t trust you to stick around,” I said. “I regret that you went to prison and I regret that ultimately it pushed you away from me emotionally. But I don’t regret Victoria and I know you don’t either.” I gave a soft laugh, even though it wasn’t even remotely funny. “I guess there is an irony there, that I’m the one who made you a father twice. That’s a bit messed up, isn’t it?”
He sighed and shook his head. “Laney, there’s a lot that’s been messed up from the very beginning. But no, I don’t regret Victoria either.”
There was a secret fantasy that I had harbored for a long time, and an anger with myself that if I had just been more patient. I could have had everything. I needed to let it go now because it never would have been right and I knew that. So I asked, “If I had been older, say twenty, and you and Mom were divorced, would you have wanted a real relationship with me? Out in public, not a secret?”
It wasn’t anything I had wanted for a long time now, even before the stranger. My feelings for Dean had never been sexual really. But that was what I had beat myself up about for a lot of years-that if I had held out, it would have happened naturally and legally and I could have been his wife. A true family. In a Woody Allen sort of way.
“I don’t know the answer to that. But I’m not sure I ever would have been morally comfortable with my behavior, and probably it would have driven us apart in the long run.” He pressed his lips together. “It’s weird, huh? I wasn’t morally comfortable, yet it didn’t stop me. That’s why you shouldn’t admire me, Laney. A man should stand by his moral convictions in the face of temptation.”
“I think you should forgive yourself.” What person hadn’t given in to temptation? I was certainly no one to pass judgment.
“Maybe someday. Not today.” His head tilted just a little as he assessed me. “You seem different, you know. More mature.”
I wasn’t sure if that was the right label for it. I’d learned patience, stillness, strength. “I’ve learned a lot about myself. From facing death and deprivation.” From being tied up and hung like a caribou, waiting to be consumed. “I’m done avoiding things. I came here to face the pas
t. The facts. To listen and own everything I did and everything she did.”
She didn’t need a name. We both knew who I was talking about.
“She wasn’t a bad person entirely. And if I should forgive myself, you should forgive her.”
But I had no patience for his defending of her crazy. “Yeah, well, if she wasn’t the worst person in the world, she wasn’t the best either.”
“At least you’re talking about her in the past tense. That’s progress, Laney.”
Oh, that voice. That gentle sound of concern. We were no longer looking at each other as equals. He’d reverted to patronizing. It was annoying. He had to know I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t stupid. I’d never been stupid. If anything, I had the uncanny ability to create an entire alternate universe in my mind, and I could believe it, live it, while still understanding the reality was something entirely different.
He meant well. I needed to remember that. That was concern and he cared about me. He had spent a great deal of time worrying about me, so at least I could put his mind at ease. He deserved to be at peace.
“I know.” I gave him a smile. “The doctors would be so proud of me, right?” Know-it-all assholes that they were.
“She’s dead. You know that, right? Your mother is dead.”
My cheeks flushed with heat, but it was more irritation than embarrassment. “I always knew she was dead, Dean. I just didn’t want to take the blame that she assigned to me. Don’t you understand that?”
How could I ever forget that day, finding her body? Of course I knew she was dead. But it was so much easier to push it aside to think about later.
Besides, was she really dead when she was still such a strong presence? When she dominated everything I’d ever done, when right now, we sat here talking about her? She was very much alive in that sense. Everyone in our family still felt the impact of her actions.
“Laney…”
He didn’t want to hear anything about that, so I kept it simple. “I pretended she was still alive. That she was away in prison too, even after she served her time and came home and killed herself. But I know she’s dead and she went out the way she lived-in the most selfish way possible.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I can’t defend her.”
“You really shouldn’t,” I said flatly. “Any woman who commits suicide by overdosing, then leaves a note blaming her eighteen year old daughter is a cunt.” To borrow the stranger’s word. “But it still made me wallow in guilt, which is exactly what she wanted. She always did get the last word.”
The thought made me press my fingernails into the cotton of my leggings to ground my anger, soothe it. The pain would distract me. He had taught me that. The stranger.
“Laney,” Dean said again, sounding scandalized.
He wasn’t used to my foul mouth or my temper. I hid those from him. But I had the sudden urge to stand up like a child, and stomp around the room, shouting, “Fuck, fuck, cunt, twat, fucking cunt twat whore-bitch, son of a cocksucker,” until he grabbed me by the arm and whisked me away to my room with a swat on my ass and threats to rinse my mouth out with soap.
“Dean,” I said, because what else could I say?
For a second we just stared at each other. So much baggage, some good, some terrible. I wanted to lay the entire blame at my mother’s feet, but maybe that wasn’t fair. Everyone made choices, and in the end, Dean and I had made choices that had kept us together, bonded. I wasn’t sure I could totally regret that, even if he did.
“I’m going back to Alaska,” I said finally. “After your release.”
“Why? Are you going to marry Michael?” His expression revealed nothing about how that made him feel.
“No. Things with Michael didn’t go as planned.” That was one way to put it. “But I met someone. The man who rescued me after the crash.”
He just shook his head. “Can’t you just be alone for a while?”
“I’ve been alone for three years. What are you talking about?” It was irritating. He didn’t want me, but what, no one else should? “You told me you met someone. Not exactly easy considering you’re in prison, so you’re not a poster child for being alone.”
“I think you need to take more time to figure out who you are.”
That was rich. “I know exactly who I am.”
And this was goodbye. I was ready to leave the past behind me, and that included him. “It was really good to see you, Dean. I mean that. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” He scrambled to stand up when I did. “You’re leaving already?”
I nodded. “I’m not sure what else there is to say.”
So many things that should have been said and hadn’t. So many things that had been done that shouldn’t have. Time to let it all go.
Outside it was raining. I tilted my head back and let it all wash over me, cold and misty. I blinked, breathing in the scent of the rain. It didn’t smell as clean here as it did in Alaska. In the pocket of my jeans my phone rang and I pulled it out. The number was unknown but I answered it, ready for a distraction.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
The stranger.
His voice cut across the miles and through the rain and landed straight into my ear, and my heart. I felt the connection between us, as strong as ever. “Hi. How are you?”
“They found him. You need to come home. Tonight or tomorrow, no later.”
So maybe I couldn’t walk away from the past after all.
It followed me everywhere and taunted. The cool fingers of my mother reaching out from the grave and stroking across my cheek as she laughed and laughed and laughed…
“I’ll be there.”
“Here, take this necklace,” I said to Sammy, handing her the very bohemian tangle of feathers and an arrow. “It looks better on you anyway.”
I was packing one suitcase full of practical clothes, like boots and wool socks. The rest of my stuff I was giving to Victoria and to Sammy or whoever wanted it. My roommate was sitting on the bed watching me, her expression troubled.
“I don’t want your necklace.”
“Fine, you don’t have to take it. Maybe Marion wants it, or Dina.”
“Laney. This is crazy. I feel like you’re leaving to go commit suicide. Like you have a suicide pact with this guy.”
Folding some jeans and putting them in the suitcase, I looked at her, surprised. I guess I could see why she might conclude that, but it was totally the opposite of what I wanted. Now that I thought my future might be taken away from me, I wanted it more than ever. I had thought about the implication of returning to Alaska, instead of just running now, on my own. Disappearing. But I couldn’t survive without the stranger, for many reasons, both practical and emotional, even if it was risky to go back.
“I’m not suicidal, I swear to you. I just don’t need all this stuff in Alaska.” I shook a statement necklace at her. “Like seriously, where would I wear this? On a trip to the outhouse?” I gave her a smile.
But Sammy didn’t look reassured. “This isn’t funny, don’t make light of it.”
If she only knew that I was nowhere near laughing. But if I didn’t hold it together I would completely lose it. I was terrified and I wanted-no, needed-the stranger to look me in the eye and reassure me everything was going to be fine. We would be fine together. “I’m not making light of it. But you’re acting like I’m doing something wrong. I’m just moving.”
“But you don’t even know this guy. Not really. You’ve known him a month.”
“I’ve been living with him for a month. That’s kind of immersion dating. I feel like I know him pretty damn well.” I did. I was certain of that, despite the dark mystery of his past.
“You sound brainwashed,” she said flatly.
“You sound jealous.” It was a bitchy thing to say, but I didn’t feel like I deserved that particular accusation.
“Jealous of what?” she asked in astonishment. “Leaving everything I know and
love behind to live in a shack in the woods with a dude I just met? No fucking thank you.”
I threw a sweatshirt down into my suitcase, pissed off. “So you know everything and I’m stupid. Fine. This is not how I wanted to leave, but go ahead, call me crazy. Everyone else does.”
Her face fell. “That’s not what I mean. I’m just worried about you. I’m telling you, Cody’s face is familiar to me. I know I’ve seen him before. This scares me, you taking off like this and cutting all ties to your life here. No one can even get in touch with you because you’ll be off the grid.”
My anger deflated. “I know. I get that. I’ll keep in touch, I promise.” As much as I could, anyway. Unless we had to go into hiding. Then I couldn’t.
“What if you need something or you need help? You’re just up there… alone.”
“I won’t be alone. I’ll be with Cody.” The suitcase was full. I pressed on all the clothes, hoping to squeeze a few more items in. “Take whatever of my jewelry you want. The rest can go to Victoria. She might like playing with it.”
“This is crazy, seriously. Like just for a minute contemplate the fact that you’re rushing back to Alaska because your backwoods boyfriend crooked his finger at you.”
That wasn’t why. I was going back because I had murdered a man and they had found his body. The thought momentarily made my vision blur but I blinked, forcing the bile back down my throat.
“I was always planning to go back, I told you that the day I got here.” I shoved in a hairdryer. Wet hair wasn’t fun when it was ten degrees and maybe we would have electricity wherever we ended up. Then I dropped a pack of hair ties on top. Then I paused and looked fully at Sammy. “The reason I want to be with Cody is because he is literally the only person who doesn’t think I’m crazy. That’s the theme of my life, everyone thinking I’m fucking insane even when I tried really, really hard to be normal. Cody doesn’t feel that way.” In fact, he might actually appreciate my crazy, which was yet another reason to love him.