His eyes narrow and he glances to the side, even though he’s in a smaller box of a room than I am. Even the guard is only accessible by a buzzer.
No matter how private it looks, I’m sure someone is monitoring our conversation. Either through the phone line or via the cameras I can see in the corners of both our rooms.
“More concerned for Kai,” he says with a snigger. “I’ve seen you in action before, remember?”
Of course, I remember. Part of those memories is the reason I turned up today. The other is a request.
“I had a few pleasant chats while I was on my holiday,” I say, deciding to leap into code and he can play catch up as required. “Someone said you were angling for a promotion.” My eyes travel at leisure around the room. “I hope this wasn’t it.”
His mouth curls into a smirk. “I’m just in here for a quick visit. What does it matter to you?”
I shift on my seat and his gaze locks onto me with open suspicion. He leans over to tap on the glass. “Pity you can’t bring me presents in here. You’ll have to store them until later.”
Anger flashes as I remember how foolish I felt when Kai laid it out for me. My son twisting my affection to turn me into a personal delivery service.
“Believe me. Any presents I might have had for you are long gone.” Since I’m here, I might as well make sure of my safety on that point. “I’d appreciate if the fallout for that doesn’t come back on me.”
He wrinkles his nose but gives a shrug. “Doesn’t matter. I can sort out my own shit in here, too. Though a few extra dollars in my commissary account wouldn’t go astray.”
“There’ll be plenty of money for that soon,” I assure him, nicely segueing into my main point. “I’m thinking of selling the house.”
His face freezes and my heart thumps a heavy beat in my chest. I need him to not freak out. I need him to be very bloody circumspect.
When he speaks, his voice is cautious. “Selling or subdividing?”
“Selling outright.” I rest my hand on my stomach, on top of a warm bump that doesn’t yet exist anywhere outside of my imagination. “Thought it would be nice to have somewhere a youngster could run around.”
He hangs up the phone, shoving himself back from the window. The buzzer on the wall earns a lot of sidelong glances as he runs his hands through his hair, pacing to and fro.
I think he’s going to go. Leave everything unsaid between us and I’m cursing because if that’s the case, I should have asked for protection for Kai first rather than asking permission to excavate whatever’s left of Josh’s father.
Then he throws himself back into his seat, picking up the receiver with all trace of good humour gone from his expression. “Why now?”
“Because I’m ready to move on and I don’t need reminders of your dad all around me.”
“Then you shouldn’t have k—” Josh catches himself, screwing his eyes shut as he talks himself down from the heights of his rage. “You should’ve thought of that before,” he amends, his glare still white-hot.
There are a thousand things I should have thought about before. It’s far too late now to even list them.
I never intended for Josh to know what became of his father. Cruel as it seems, I was happy to let him believe that his dad had skipped town on the both of us, not leaving behind any trail that could lead back to him.
My son was at a friend’s house on a sleepover, planned a fortnight in advance, but a stubborn stomach bug had been making the rounds at the school. It brought him back home unexpectedly. While I collected him and carried him to the car wrapped in a rug, then deposited him in bed, his father’s body cooled on the sofa.
I thought he’d be out like a light as I resumed my gardening activities, digging a hole that never seemed to grow deeper despite my efforts, despite my blisters, despite the twinges in my lower back.
When it was finally done and I slid the remains onto a low trolley, wheeling it across the living room, stalling on the lip down to the patio, stalling again with rolling it across the grass, he must have glanced outside.
Forget glanced, he could have sat in his window and watched the whole proceedings. I never thought to look up. My entire focus was locked on one task.
A week later when the media circus was getting into full swing and there wasn’t a day that went by without a drop in or phone call from the police, Josh began having nightmares. One night, he screamed about people growing in the back yard like vegetables. Another time he sobbingly extracted the promise that I not put him in a hole while he was asleep.
So, yeah. Rescind my Mother’s Day cards for eternity.
For a long time, I pretended it could be a coincidence. For a long time, that was the only way I could move forward.
The thought I’d done something so terrible in view of my son, the person I loved most of all, couldn’t exist at the same time I worked out how to resume my life. How to train. How to get a job. How to get past every day with the guilt weighing on my mind and the past weighing on my shoulders.
If it had just been Rod, I would have bounced back. After all, I’d just slipped a triple helping of sleeping tablets into his drink, then injected an air bubble into his bloodstream while he was asleep.
