And second of all… “Excuse me, ma’am.Who am I even talking to right now?I thought I was speaking with Jasmine MacLaine of Yosemite Ranch.”
“What’s your point, Uncle Declan?”
“My point is—wait.Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I’m taking a much-needed mental health day,” she says.“Which brings me to the bottom line of this call.”
This call has a bottom line?Since when do nine-year-olds have bottom lines?
Next, she’s going to tell me to circle back tomorrow when she has more bandwidth to synergize.
“What’s the bottom line?”I ask.
She leans in closer to the camera.“If you don’t come home with Summer, don’t bother coming home at all.”
The screen goes blank.
I sit back, trying to wrap my head around what just happened.
I think Junior Boss Lady just ripped me a new one.
CHAPTER 64
Summer
The prison shuttle pulls up to the women’s annex and I climb in and join another crowd of wretched people in this wretched place.The bus bumps along as it winds around the prison complex.It’s razor wire and concrete as far as the eye can see.I get dropped off at the main facility.
There’s a sea of visitors here, and a million hoops to jump through before I finally make it to the visitors’ room.I check the clock on the wall and see that it’s after two o’clock.I’ve already been here so long today that if I have to wait another three hours, visiting hours will be over, and this will all be for nothing.
But once I’ve checked my bag and been processed, I wait only minutes before I see my father appear.
He lumbers slowly into the visitors’ room, a protruding gut leading the way.His hair’s gone salt and pepper.His face is drawn in deep vertical lines and so rough with sun damage that he looks like an old saddle.
It’s shocking, really.In my mind, Steve Stevens has always been a wiry and jumpy punk of a man with thick, dark hair and skin so pale he’s nearly see-through.Of course, the man from my past consumed only drugs.This one looks like he lives for his three hots a day.
He passes right by me.I watch as he searches the tables for the woman who says she’s his daughter.
He doesn’t recognize me, and for some reason, this is a relief.It means I’ve grown, that I’ve changed so much that he can’t pick me out in a crowd by the fear in my eyes.
I’m no one to him, if I ever was.
I stand and wave.He shakes his head and stops, leans forward, and squints at me.Finally, it dawns on him that I’m his daughter, and he walks to me.
I sit down.He sits down.I don’t want an awkward greeting, and no way do I want a hug or even a handshake.I don’t want him to touch me at all.I don’t think I could bear it.I might scream.Or punch him.
But I don’t have to worry about any of that awkwardness, since he makes no moves to touch me.I wonder what he’ll say, what his first words to me will be after all this time.
“They let visitors give prisoners whatever they want from the vending machines,” he says.“Did you get tokens on your way in?I want corn chips.”
My lips part.It’s all I can do not to laugh.“Uh, I didn’t know about the tokens.”
“Dammit,” he says and starts to gnaw on a fingernail that’s already been chewed down to the nub.
“I could go ask,” I offer.
“That’s not how it works.If you don’t get the tokens on the way in, you can’t get the tokens at all.”He puts his gnarled, weather-beaten hands flat on the table and lets his gaze wander to other prisoners and their visitors.The sight of a man enjoying a bag of corn chips is too much for him to handle, and he shakes his head at me in disgust.“So?What are you here for?Not money, I know.You need something signed?”
“No, nothing like that.”
