Tommy was apologetic. He and Nissa had plans for Coney Island, he said, and if he cancelled again, he’d most likely find himself single. Evie laughed and let him off the hook. Nissa had been after him all summer to go to the amusement park.
Thorn agreed to bring them, almost too eagerly, until Evie remembered he’d been watching Prison Break on Netflix. “You know you aren’t allowed in the prison, right?” she asked, careful not to disappoint him. “You might be allowed to wait in the visitor waiting room, but you won’t get a tour or anything.”
He shrugged. “I have been inside prisons before. I just want to see if I could plan a breakout.”
**********
The morning of the visit was a little hectic. Evie had to remind her mother twice before they left that she couldn’t wear her St. Michael medal into the prison and then caught her tucking it into her bra in the elevator.
“You’re going to have to go through a metal detector, Mom.” Evie rolled her eyes as they stepped out into the lobby. “But by all means, try to sneak it in. I hope you enjoy the strip search.”
She had no idea if a strip search would actually happen, but the way her mother’s eyes widened in panic before she shoved the medal into her purse gave Evie a small, guilty flicker of satisfaction.
The two-hour drive north was surprisingly pleasant. Della adored Thorn and behaved almost normally around him, which gave Evie a much-needed reprieve. She sat in the back seat, working on her final-term project on her laptop, while her mother and Thorn compared the Catholic and Serbian Orthodox churches in the front.
When Thorn explained that every family had a saint who protected their home and casually mentioned his was the Archangel Michael, Della lit up and pulled the medal out of her purse to show him. That topic carried them the rest of the drive, and Evie tuned it out. She’d never been religious; and, aside from the obligatory midnight mass Della insisted on every Christmas, she’d stopped going to church at fourteen. Surprisingly, Oscar had backed her up, telling Della she was old enough to make her own decision and to leave her alone.
They arrived at the prison, and Thorn was permitted to accompany them into the Visitor Processing Center. He kept their phones and purses while they went through the security checks before being escorted by guards into the visiting room.
To Evie’s surprise, it wasn’t like TV or the movies - no rows of cubbies with glass partitions and phones to speak through. Instead, it was a large, rectangular room with about twenty-five tables bolted to the floor and spaced several feet apart. Two other families were already seated with their loved ones on opposite sides of the room.
The space was clean to the point of sterility: linoleum floors, gray cinderblock walls, and the faint smell of disinfectant. Several cameras hung from the ceiling corners, and a fewcorrectional officers milled around near a raised desk at the far end, watching everything with professional boredom. A line of vending machines hummed along one wall.
Evie and Della were directed to a table near the center. Once they were seated, a door opened, and Oscar was brought inside. He approached in handcuffs and a waist chain, his steps slow and shuffling. He looked smaller than she remembered, more stooped, his once-red beard now more gray than not but was otherwise unchanged.
Evie glanced at her mother and was startled to see Della sitting ramrod straight, her expression composed, almost stern, looking more like a strict schoolmarm than the meek, nervous woman she usually was in Oscar’s presence. A small, fierce spark of pride flickered in Evie’s chest at the change, and she smiled as she faced the front again.
When Oscar was seated across from them and the handcuffs removed, he folded his hands in front of him and began speaking immediately, no hello, no how are you, not even a thank you for coming. His attention stayed fixed on Evie, barely sparing his ex-wife a glance, his expression contrite.
“Evie, I’m sorry for pushing you to go to law school and for my words and actions when you switched majors. I shouldn’t have expected you to follow in my footsteps. My need to continue my family’s tradition completely overwhelmed my responsibility to be a good father to you. I’m also sorry for how my actions affected you both. I wish I’d handled things differently.”
His fingers twitched, like he wanted to reach for her, but a quick glance toward the guards kept his hands still.
“I didn’t mean what I said. You’re my daughter; whether that’s what you want to be or not, that’s how I see you.”
Evie nodded, dazed by the suddenness of it all. “Thank you.” She was a little disgusted that it had taken him this long to decide to apologize, and she suspected it was only because he’d finally realized she and Della weren’t going to reach out first.
“I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but -” He was cut off by a loud, derisive snort from Della.
“You think? You completely blew apart our lives. We still get death threats because of you.” Her darkly amused expression didn’t match the sharpness in her voice.
“Look, I know what I did was wrong. I’m trying to apologize here.” Oscar’s face was already turning red. Evie could see the struggle in his jaw as he tried to stay calm. She wanted to intervene, but Della’s interruption had stunned her into silence.
“Well, I’m glad you can finally see that kidnapping and trying to kill someone was wrong.” Della rolled her eyes, sarcasm thick in her voice as she leaned back in her chair, folding her arms. “Are you planning to apologize for anything else?”
Evie had never seen this side of her mother before. She reached out and placed a warning hand on Della’s arm, silently begging her not to push him further. However, a small, suspicious part of her wondered if Della was doing this deliberately, trying to provoke him for ignoring Father Garrick’s letter.
“Like what? Providing for you?” Oscar’s voice was a low, barely controlled hiss, but the matchstick-red flush of his face and the vein throbbing in his forehead told Evie he was seconds from losing it. “Listening to you whine about not having enough children? Making sure you never had to work a day in your life?”
“I worked plenty of days!” Della snapped, not bothering to keep her voice down. Evie could see the guards watching now, edging closer, and she wanted to sink into the floor.
“I only stopped working because you tanked your family’s law firm in less than a year of running it on your own, which left me without a job, too! We would’ve been homeless if I hadn’t begged Mary to ask Henry about hiring you!”
Oscar shot to his feet and slammed both hands on the table, giving Evie an almost dizzying sense of déjà vu. “No wonder I turned to drugs - you’re an impossible bitch, Della!”
Two guards closed in, warning him to calm down or be returned to his cell and lose visiting privileges for a month.
“Oh, sure. She starts the shit, and I’m the one getting reprimanded!” Oscar’s voice rose until he was shouting at the guard. Two more guards hurried over, one motioning to Evie and Della that it was time to go while the others wrestled Oscar back into his cuffs.
