My first half year at state was bad and worse than bad. It was the loneliness mostly. The nights were the worst of course, nothing to do but think and wonder how things were going back there, at his house. From the way Stacey’d talked to me that last time I’d seen her while I was still in county lockup, I was sure that what they were saying about me to Jenna as well as to each other was likely not real sympathetic or empathetic, more likely pathetic. I had to smile though; they were out of the loop and that pleased me no end.

Did I care about what they said? Not an iota. I’d done what I had to do to protect my baby, the baby the two cheaters had tried to minimize my influence with, really take from me!. I was more than doubtful that my erstwhile brother, ex-brother, would have done as much to protect her. He was way too much into the material things of life: money, station, social influence were what mattered most to him. No, he would, I was sure, have hired her the best of lawyers, bribed people, done everything in his power to get her a reduced sentence, but in the end never would he have opted to take her place behind bars; it wasn’t in him.

******

“But mom, I need to go see him,” said Jenna.

“Listen to me, honey. Your dad David has asked that no one come up to see him while he is in there. He told me in no uncertain terms that he just doesn’t want to have visitors. He said it would be just too much for him to deal with. He will see us when he gets out; those were his words, not mine. Okay?” said Stacey.

“Mom, I need to see him. I gotta try. Okay? I mean I gotta!” she said. “I know what he said, but I gotta try.”

“Jenna, your dad did an awful thing killing those three men. I mean it was a truly awful thing . . .” at her words her daughter broke into uncontrollable sobbing; she ran from the room.

They’d been talking in the kitchen. The back door creaked open and her husband came in holding two small grocery bags. Stacey sagged down into a chair at the kitchen table.

“Talking to Jenna,” he said, correctly analyzing the despairing look in his wife’s eyes and features. She nodded.

“Yes. She’s intent on trying to go up to the prison and see him. He’s of the same opinion as me about that, like I told you. He doesn’t want to be visited. Said it would be too much for him. But Jenna . . .” she said.

“I guess, I understand where she’s coming from. I mean she feels guilty that he did what he did because of her, to save her,” said Ronald Carter. “Never mind that it was overkill.”

“Exactly. She just now ran up to her room to sob some more. She hasn’t stopped being melancholy since it all happened,” she said. “I’m at my wits end trying to get her to a place where she can at least accept things and be patient and wait for him to get out. The lawyer said most like six or seven years.” He nodded.

“I think that figures to be about right if he stays out of trouble while he’s in there,” he said.

“You know, my telling her what’s what isn’t doing it. Maybe you . . .” she said, and stopped. She was clearly hoping he’d finish the sentence for her.

“Okay, I’ll talk to her. I already have of course, but not specifically about her wanting to go up there to see him,” he said. “I guess now I have to. I know my brother would want her to be calm and patient and live her life. About that I have no doubt. It was stupid of him to kill those three men, but It’s not like . . . well something.”

“I know. It’s so not his way. But maybe, you know, Jenna being in trouble. I mean maybe he thought that he didn’t have a choice,” she said.

“Yes, that had to be it. There’s no other explanation,” he said. “You know, maybe you could talk to Aunt Delia, and her to Jenna.”

“Yes, that might be a way to go. I’m pretty sure she could get Jenna to listen to reason if it comes to that,” said Stacey. “Yes, let’s try that. I’ll contact Aunt Delia tomorrow.”

******

Delia Westbrook looked thoughtfully at the two visitors across the table from her.

“Of course I’ll talk to her if you like,” said Aunt Delia. “But, that said, I’m not sure I agree with you as to the wisdom, or unwisdom, of her going up there. And, yes, I know that David doesn’t want visitors. And, even though he doesn’t want them, the fact is he’s going to need them, and chief among is Jenna.

“Tell you what, I’m going up there regardless. Let me talk to him about it, I mean about him allowing visitors. Maybe we can get a handle on this somehow and do the right thing. At any rate I’m going to try,” she said.

The two visitors looked at each other. Stacey nodded for Ronald to take the lead.

“Aunt Delia, Stacey and I, well, we agree with David that we should all stay away from that awful place and wait till he gets home before seeing him, including Jenna,” said Ronald.

His aunt smiled at him. “Ronald, Stacey, that man is part of our lives. Yes, what he did was truly awful. He’s being punished enough for that. He doesn’t need to be abandoned by us because of it. If you two don’t want to go, or refuse to, well, that’s up to you. But, I am going. And, I will ask about Jenna going, I mean being allowed to go. If he says no. well, then okay, that’ll be it. But otherwise, I hope you won’t try to influence Jenna not to. Okay? Please?” she said.

“Okay, Aunt Delia, if you think that’s the best thing. I have to admit to really not being sure how to go with all of this. It’s all just so crazy,” said Stacey. Her husband nodded his agreement.

******

I was as nervous as I had ever been. I’d been inside for almost seven months and this is the first time I’d been told that I had a visitor. Any other visitor would have gotten a big fat go home! But, Aunt Delia? I’d agreed to see her; I actually wanted to.

I saw her come through the heavy door and head for the four person metal table with attached metal stools where I’d had set up camp. I rose as she approached.

“Hello, Aunt Delia,” I said. She smiled her usual disarming smile, and I was, well, disarmed.

“I won’t ask you how you are, David; I’m sure I already know,” she said. “But, I hope you are well at least.”

“I’m okay, Aunt Delia. I mean the food’s bad, the company worse, and the guards heartless and mostly brainless; but health-wise I guess I’m okay,” I said.

“Well, thank the Lord for that.

“You know, if you would allow, others would be up here to visit you. I know that you told Jenna and Stacey both that you didn’t want visitors, but . . .” she said.

I nodded in acknowledgement of her words. “Yes, that’s true and that is indeed the way I want it,” I said.

“And me?” she said.

“You? Well, you’re different,” I said. “If you were to come every once in a great while, well . . .”

“Well, thank you for that, and I will,” she said. “I’ll bring cookies next time.” She smiled, her attempt to make me feel a little more human I supposed.

“That’d be great,” I said.

We talked for some time. I got the skinny on how the family, my ex-family was coping with the situation. I was somewhat concerned that Jenna was having so much trouble dealing with things at her end. I did not want her to fall apart. Hell, that’s the reason I was certain that she could never have survived inside. I made an on the spot decision.

“Aunt, Delia, tell Jenna I will see her. I need to calm her down and get her to live her life and not worry about me. I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do, but I need her not to be acting the way she is, or reacting if that’s the right term. I don’t know if I can be successful in that, but I guess I gotta try,” I said.

“Okay, David, I will tell her. She’ll likely break speed records getting up her the next visiting day,” said Aunt Delia. I had to smile at that.

“Of course I had an ulterior motives in allowing Jenna the chance to come up to see me. One, I needed her to calm down and not be so emotional about everything. And two, I wanted her to stop pressuring her two parents let her come up. Yes, I’d see her, but I would make it more than plain that I did not want her to come up anymore. The once would be it.

******

It was almost a month before I saw her, Jenna. It was a holiday, memorial day. Visitors were allowed on third Sundays of the month and national holidays; them were the rules.

“Daddy, daddy, my God how sorry I am,” said my baby.

“Jenna calm down. And oh yeah, hello,” I said.

“Daddy, I don’t know if I can keep this up. I know what we agreed, but it is so unfair to you,” she said.

“Jenna, listen to me. They would likely not believe you even if you tried to undo our agreement. But, regardless of any of that, I can do this without undue problem; you could not! Now, I need you to listen to me and obey your daddy, okay?” I said.

“Daddy . . .” she sobbed.

“Stop that right now. I need you to back my play, now. You need to be strong for the both of us. And, for the record those men deserved to die; they were awful people who were ruining the lives of many others, you included,” I said.

“But, daddy it is so wrong,” she said.

“Jenna, I see it as an opportunity to make things right by you, by all of us, even my brother,” I said. “I can’t explain it all to you now, not enough time, but when I get out, and I will get out, I will tell all to you and to them,” I said.

“Daddy?” she said.

“When I get out,” I said. “Do you think you can pull yourself together enough for us to get by this little delay we’re going to have between now and our next meet up?” I was sounding as demanding as I could without hitting at her too hard.

“Okay, daddy. Daddy, I love you,” she said. And that dear reader made my day, her words.

“Good!” I said. “I love you too.”

We talked a little longer. I found out some stuff about her school plans: plans for college which she promised me she’d start in the fall, some months hence. I hoped she’d keep her focus; that was a critical thing for me.

At any rate I was on my own now. I had to depend on the two cheaters to raise her right for the next several years. But, as to that I was pretty confident that they would.

Jesus! I was alone and lonely and sick at heart. I would be spending a lot of sleepless nights over the next many years, and most of them, for what it’s worth , would not be related to Jenna. No, they would be mostly about my lost love, Stacey Carter. God how I needed that woman! Knowing I could never have her again was destructive of my very soul!

******

I guess it was the equivalent of a Dear John letter. The sometime might’ve, could’ve, should’ve been new love of my life, Madeleine Carter nee Barry, didn’t visit me, but she did write me. Of course she didn’t try to visit me because of my prohibition against visitors from wheresoever, well, except Aunt Delia.

She was apologetic as hell. But the bottom line was that at her age she couldn’t wait for me to get out. She needed a man, a husband, sooner rather than later. I understood, and I empathized with her situation. I wrote her back a note of understanding and wished her well. I wasn’t sure Madeleine was a good fit for me anyway. She was great as a friend and sometime bed partner, but as a lifetime mate, soulmate, well, I wasn’t sure about that. So, considering the situation as a whole, I had to figure that her abandoning me made sense. Hell, I had to believe that she would shed a few more tears than I would over the lost opportunity, so what the hey, it was what it was.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 2008

It’s not my fault, so why do I feel guilty. The man, my used to be man, didn’t have to kill those guys. He could have run off after he got the gun away from that Harry guy. But he shot ‘em down, all of them. Oh my, what a scene that must have been! And Jenna was there to see it. I know why she is always crying now for sure: she feels responsible. If she hadn’t been there, none of it would have happened. But, even allowing for that; he didn’t have to kill them, certainly not all of them! Why! Why! Why! Lucky he had a good lawyer; he could have gotten the death penalty. But seven to ten years is severe enough I guess. He’ll have time to think about what he did, to them, and to all of us, thought Stacey.

******

“Okay, she went up there. So . . .?” said Ronald Carter.

“Yes, she did. She actually did! Aunt Delia gave her the go ahead. I guess, David okay’d it with her first; then, she relayed the invitation to Jenna,” said Stacey.

“And?” he said.

“And, I guess there were tears and solace and a request by him that there be no more visits by anybody until he gets out,” she said.

“Hmm, so maybe in hindsight it turned out to be a good thing. I mean her going up there to see him,” said Ronald. She nodded.

“I guess, I mean apparently. At least now we won’t have to be pressuring her to not go. I guess that’s something. I have to say that I appreciate his attitude. He’s doing the right thing or trying to. Heaven knows it’s little enough. He has a lot to make up for,” she said.

“Yes he does. But, on the upside, Jenna will be pretty much in our circle from now on. I mean I will be able to be the dad I’ve so wanted to be. And, maybe I can finally sell her on the idea that I’m not just a late comer to the party,” he said.

“Hmm, yes, I guess. But, her guilt at being the cause of his going up there, well, I mean we do still have to go slow. We don’t want to appear to be taking advantage of the situation; that would not be good; it could backfire on us if we tried,” she said.

“Yes, I see what you mean. So we just let things take their natural course. No pressure. We’ll just be there, available,” he said.

“Yes, exactly,” she said.

“She has indicated that she wants to start college in the fall. That’s just a couple of months off,” he said.

“Yes. She’s told me that she talked to you about that,” she said. “Wants to be a lawyer, she told me.”

“Well, maybe by the time he gets out she’ll be one,” he said. The woman smiled.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” she said.

“It would indeed,” he said.

“A couple of months you say,” she said.

“Yes, I have a contact or two. I can get her in at State even at this late date. I’ll take tomorrow off and head over there and get the ball rolling. By this time next month, she’ll have her classes and be all signed up and ready to go,” he said.

“Good, good, very good,” she said.

******

The tears rolled down her cheeks. The day was hot and humid. The pool a few scant yards across from her, as she sat under the umbrella table on their expansive patio, glistened in the afternoon sun.

She recalled better days as she sat there and waited for her man and her daughter to return from the nearby college campus. She wondered if her daughter would write the man upstate and tell him of her plans. She knew she’d told him that she was planning on going to college, but of course at the time she, Jenna, had had no details that she could reasonably have shared with him. Well, she would now.

She heard the garage door opener engage across the yard from her. They were home. She wiped the tears from her eyes, and made to get up and go into the house. She’d reminisce about her other man, the one who used to be her man, another time. She did miss the lug for sure, that would never change. She hoped he was all right, well, as all right as he could be in a place like that.

******

“Hi,” he said. He threw his briefcase on to the dinette table and wrapped his arms around the woman he’d stolen from his brother.

“Hi to you too,” she said, “how’d everything go?”

“Good, Jenna’s in, in the school. She has an appointment with her advisor tomorrow at 3:00PM,” he said. The two older adults turned toward the sound of the door opening and closing in the back of the adjacent kitchen.

Jenna entered the room and unburdened her arms of the quarter ton of papers and folders she’d been carrying in from the car.

“Hi, mom,” she said.

“Hi, honey. So you’re going to college,” said Stacey.

“Yes, gonna get it done,” said Jenna. “Dad David asked only one thing of me, to finish college. Her mother didn’t frown, well, not outwardly.

“Yes, and we’re asking the same thing of you,” said Stacey. The younger woman smiled, but it was a weak smile and it carried a message, one her mother did not correctly interpret.

“Have you decided on a major?” said her mother.

“Pre-law,” said Jenna. “Mostly Philosophy and Psychology courses after I get done with the Gen-Ed stuff. Long term it’ll be Law school.”

“Sounds exciting, doesn’t it, dear,” she said, glancing over at her husband who had somehow retrieved a beer from the kitchen without anyone noticing.

“It does indeed,” said Ronald.

“So when do your classes start?” said Stacey.

“Not for a couple of months, but I did get a reading list from the advisor. I intend to hit the ground running. Anyway, I’ll have most of the reading done before school starts,” she said.-

The talking went on for some time, but the elephant in the room: her visit to see, and her relationship with, the man who’d raised her was not addressed.

******

The food in the mess hall at the DOC, while not exactly terrible, left a ton to be desired. Today was Thursday, chili and beans day. The place didn’t smell bad enough every other day? They had to add to the odiferous awfulness of the place by serving chili and beans! Well, I guess it was a place of punishment and Thursday lunch certainly added to and enhanced that goal, boy did it ever.

There were usually around two hundred inmates served at the same time from our block, block C. I’d done my best to keep myself from making any friends, or enemies in the almost one year now since being incarcerated. But, there were two exceptions to that effort on my part. Jonathan Margoles and Hector Santos.

Hector was my cell mate; Jonathan was my boss in the kitchen. I’d been assigned to kitchen duty soon after being sent up. I’d heard from a number of my fellow inmates that the kitchen was a plum job at State. I guess it was. I could’ve been cleaning toilets or some other miserable job.

I’d gotten the job when I was asked to do a favor for one of the guard captains. I was pretty good at electrical and damn near nonpareil at plumbing. Captain West needed some electrical fixed in his quarters, yes he stayed at the prison, he was there Monday through Friday. He knew my qualifications: Ferguson sold a lot of stuff ordered by hardware stores, and I had to know the ins-and-outs of those tools. I’d not been a salesman per se, but I had had to deal with company reps and suppliers at different times and I had to know the stock. I guess that info was in my file. Anyway, I was tapped to help him out. The problem wasn’t the electrical, well it was, but rather the fact that what he wanted done was against the rules. The phone and the computer line it served were off the grid, the prison’s grid. Rumor was he used it to obtain prohibited items of luxury, even the occasional woman, for well-heeled inmates. Well, those were the rumors. I didn’t give a shit; I just wanted to get along. At any rate I got the plumb job because of that.

One other benefit, for being on the right side of the captain’s favor, was that I got a degree of protection from other inmates. It wasn’t total, and Hector let me know that it was better to not make waves if attacked or demands were made on me especially by the gangs of which there were a few in evidence.

I’d been lucky so far, a year in and no attacks or demands. That was about to change. Captain West was transferred to a different prison. My protection was gone. I was not the member of any gang and had no group of friends to look to for protection either.

It turned out that somebody who looked like I did was in demand in our male only society.

Geoffrey Spaulding was six-three, and right at two-fifty. He thought I was pretty and he made it known that I could keep my teeth and ribs if I cooperated. And, so would begin my second year at the Department of Corrections, the institute of misery.

It was Thursday, shower day for my group in C-block. I wasn’t allowed to leave; mister Spaulding made sure of that.

“On your knees and do a good job or you won’t like what happens next,” he said.

That I wouldn’t like what was going to happen in the first place evidently didn’t occur to him, or, occurring to him, didn’t interest him. So, being the ultimate pragmatist, I got down on my knees as instructed took loose hold of his penis and began to suck him off.

Over the next two years I spent a lot of time on my knees. Similarly, on a few occasions I had the infinite pleasure of bending over and taking the big man up the butt. Fortunately, that wasn’t often, maybe half a dozen times during the period.

Continuing on the downside, also during those two years, were a few pretty major fights with other inmates. I won two and lost two in those particular set-tos. At the end of year three or the beginning of year four, depending on how one looked at things, I caught a break.

I fell into a group that was ultra-religious and that watched out for one another. I wasn’t especially religious, never had been, but all of a sudden I found it prudent to find Jesus. Being a member of the group pretty much ended my “love” affair with Geofrey Spaulding; even he didn’t mess with the Jesus freaks. Not sure whether that was because he was afraid of Jesus or the forty or fifty members of the bible beaters of C-block.

******

Still, the fights, the de facto rapes bad as they were didn’t come close to hurting as much as my nights alone: my nights without my wife, the woman who had dumped me for my brother, my ex-brother. Did I hate them still? I guess I did, but, that said the pain of loss was far worse than any anger I still harbored toward them hard as that might be to believe. And, hard as it might have been to believe, if she would have come back to me, I would have been willing to forgive and forget everything, all of the bad. Of course fantasies of that magnitude were not to be entertained, not seriously entertained at any rate.

I had told them that I didn’t want to be visited, and I didn’t. Still, I would like to have gotten at least a Christmas card or two from the lot of them; and with but two exceptions, I never did, nor any other kind of remembrance. The two exceptions to this last were birthday cards from my daughter and Aunt Delia. Each one of those had a short letter inscribed in it giving me some idea of what was going on in cheatersville. But, apart from the two of them, I heard nothing.

Though Aunt Delia had planned to visit me even bring me cookies; that never happened: she’d taken ill. She was forced to stay in a care facility, at her own request; she couldn’t take care of herself well enough.

Jenna let me know that the cheaters had offered to take her in, but she’d demurred. I had the feeling that she did so out of disgust with the incestuous relationship that the two of them were engaged in, but I could have been wrong about that.

******

James Ellison, age twenty-four, was waiting outside the female dorm. It was cold. He was pacing back and forth. He was in uniform: his Navy blues. She was always late and always kept him waiting, he mused. He saw her through the glass front door as she came down the stairs inside, finally.

“Hi, sorry, I’m late,” she said.

“No problem, babe. Pizza?” he said.

“Sounds good,” she said. They headed off to the pizza parlor, some four blocks from the dorm, on foot.

They were sitting in a booth waiting on the pizza to be done. “So have you decided about, you know, us?” he said, testing the waters. She nodded.

“The answer is yes, James. But, not until I graduate in June. You okay with that?” she said. He pulled her close to himself and kissed her, hard.

“Thank God,” he said. “And, of course June is okay by me.”

“How about your parents? Should we tell them, I mean tonight?” he said.

She suddenly went pensive on him. “My dad’s . . .”

“Yes, I know, you dad’s in prison. But, your other dad, your bio dad?” he said.

“Yes, he’s been more of a dad to me than the one who raised me,” she said.

A psychologist would have been able to explain it, maybe as a self-defense mechanism of sorts. Jenna’s attitude, at least her outward attitude, toward the father that had saved her, had morphed. She now avowed how the man, David Carter, though he had undeniably saved her, was a criminal and deserved his punishment.

The morphing had been a slow process, and one that had been aided and abetted by her bio dad and her mother. Their motive, their stated motive between them, had been to get Jenna to lighten up on herself and to dump the seemingly endless melodrama that had been so in evidence during the first year of her father’s incarceration.

“But, well, never mind I guess we can tell them, mom and dad Ronald,” she said.

“You gonna bother to tell your other dad. I mean I know what you think of him, but . . .” he said.

“I guess. I do kind of owe him. I mean he did raise me. But, he won’t see me, so I guess it’ll have to be by letter and maybe a photo or two,” she said.

He looked her askance. “Your kinda down on the guy aren’t you?” he said.

“No, not really, but he is kinda something. I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just he’s so, weak or something. I mean, well, I just don’t know.”

“Well, he did kill those bad guys that were trying to mess with you,” he said. “I mean he wasn’t weak then.”

The man who spoke, and was sitting across from her didn’t notice the darkening of her look as he’d said this last.

It was all so long ago now. She could not recall when her opinion of her dad in prison had changed into something bordering on contempt. She was still grateful, even happy, that he had taken the fall for her, but not proud of him, if that would have been the way to say it, she thought. She’d cried her eyes out so many nights about it all, what had happened. Then, one night there were no more tears only a kind of malaise, a kind of emptiness. Then there was James, and she was saved. James understood her. Daddy Ron liked him. Her mother liked him. Daddy David?

Daddy David? Well, he’d never met him, never heard of him. Daddy David was weak, and foolish. Thinking about him now made her want to cry again, but, she couldn’t; there were no more tears only something she couldn’t define. She’d send him the letter. Tell him about James and her wedding plans. There’d be a couple of pics too. That would be enough; she would have done her duty, and she saw it as a duty not an act of love and hope.

******

Hank Bartlett wasn’t actually stalking her, but he was hoping she’d show up as she usually did at the campus caf. He’d seen her several times and today would be the day he made his move on her, ask her to have a cup of coffee with him. They did have the same class, CJ II.

The caf was all but in an out and out uproar. His luck was holding: she’d just walked in. He sidled over to where she was filling a plate with salad fixings; he grabbed a plate and a utensil packet and came up behind her.

“Hey, Jen, how yuh doin’?” he said. She turned to look at him.

“Okay,” she said.

“Mind if I join you for lunch?” he said. She shrugged.

He loaded some greens on his plate and followed her to one of the eight person tables in the middle of the auditorium like cafeteria.

They parked themselves. She didn’t immediately sit, however, she headed over to the bank of drink dispensers and coffee urns some little space away from their table. She got herself a cup of coffee and returned to the table sliding in to a seat across from him.

“Hank Bartlett,” he said, identifying himself in case she’d forgotten his name.

She smiled.

“I know your name,” she said. “But, just so you know, I have a boyfriend, a fiancé actually.”

He held up his hands in an “I surrender” mode. “No, no, I understand, a looker like you is sure to have a boyfriend if not several of them. No, I was just lookin’ to have someone to have lunch with.” She snickered.

“Yeah right,” she said. She decided she liked the guy. She knew he was a cop or something. One of the girls in class had told her that much. He was taking Criminal Justice II for that reason; well, to get promoted was what she’d been told.

“You’re an officer? Right?” she said. He let loose a little laugh.

“Kinda, I’m a guard a Wallingford State Penal Institution,” he said. “I’m on leave to take this class. Hope to get promoted, well, after I pass this class.”

“A prison guard? Really!” she said, trying not to sound too interested.

“Yeah, well it’s a living,” he said. “Pay’s good.”

“Isn’t it dangerous? I mean with all of those bad guys in there?” she said. He smirked.

“No, not really. Not for the guards, for the inmates, well . . .” he said meaningfully.

“Huh?” she said, seeming to be interested in this last.

“Well, the inmates kinda do unto each other if you know what I mean,” he said.

“Do unto each other?” she said. “You mean they fight?”

“Well, that, but a lot of other stuff too,” he said.

“Huh?” she said. He smiled. He’d gotten her interested in himself, he thought.

“Yeah, well they rape each other sometimes, kind of a lot actually,” he said. “And, they do other stuff to the weak ones; you know, if they don’t cooperate. One guy got castrated in the kitchen because he wouldn’t give the cook’s helper oral sex. Like I said, they do unto each other.”

“But aren’t you guards supposed to prevent that kind of stuff? I mean the violence and all?”

“Yes and no. Women are kinda in short supply in prison and so the men do stuff to take the edge off if you know what I mean. The guards kinda look the other way most of the time. It keeps the lid on the pressure cooker if you know what I mean. And really there’s no way to stop all of it even if we, the guards, did make more of an effort in that regard,” he said.

“Oh my,” she said. The man across from her didn’t quite catch the urgency in her voice.

She’d not thought of anything like what she’d just learned. She began to worry anew about her dad in that place, the place she should have been in instead of him. The tears, long dried up until now, came again. She had to try and go see him, maybe with James along for support. Yes, James could maybe help her to deal with what she had to deal with. But, first things first: she’d write that letter she’d considered writing about her and James, and send a pic or two with it as she had also planned.

******

The guard threw the letter in through the bars; it was still in the envelope but it had been opened and read by the powers. I opened it and began to read. It was from Jenna. The pictures were interesting. So, she had a young man. No big surprise there, and he was a sailor. Met him in college, she said.

I reread the single page several times. I’d gotten a couple of cards from her in the past, but this was the first letter per se, and, the first pics.

There’d been no mention of her mother, my ex. Oh how bad I wanted to hear from her, or at least of her. But, that was not a realistic hope and I knew it. She was gone and never to be mine again, not even on a friendship basis, not really, not after my incarceration.

I was sure that Jenna had kept my, our, secret. That had to be ironclad. It’s the way I wanted it, and it’s the way it had to be. My baby came first even if my baby was not my blood.

And, then the surprise of my entire so far six year stay in prison appeared out of nowhere.

“A visitor? Who?” I said.

“Not, sure, but she’s young,” said the screw. “Your daughter maybe?” he said.

“Tell her no. I don’t want to see her,” I said.

“You sure?” said the guard.

“Yeah, I am,” I said.

I would find out later, much later, that it had been my daughter that showed up unannounced. And, I didn’t know it at the time, but her fiancé had been with her. On one level I would like to have seen her, but I did not, could not, deal with the feelings a meet up like that one was bound to unleash on the both of us. I would send her a note reiterating my reasons for not seeing her. That had to be enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 2013

I looked up at the beat up calendar my cellmate had somehow managed to get put up on the wall behind the seatless toilet at the back our little space. In two weeks it will have been six years since my incarceration. I was hurting, hurting bad.

I missed her so much, my Stacey, and I cried almost daily because of that reality. I needed her so bad! My God I did. Oddly, crazily, the physical pain and humiliation of all of those other things was kind of cathartic. Cathartic because they took my mind off of my worst agonies. I hoped she was all right. I did. I hoped my Jenna was all right. Aunt Delia had said she was when last I’d seen her. And the letter, it was filled with hope or so I read into it of Jenna and her young man, the sailor.

I was always melancholy anymore. I wondered if I died in this horrible place if anyone would give a damn one way or the other. I mean besides Aunt Delia. I had to think that Jenna would shed a tear or two: I mean I had done all I could for her.

And, so my thoughts enslaved me, destroyed me a little more each day. And, then it was evening and morning at the start of year seven.

*****

The knock on the door was unexpected. Stacey Carter answered it.

“Aunt Delia!” she said, surprised to see the older woman.

“Hello, Stacey, may I come in?” said Aunt Delia.

“Of course, of course,” said Stacey. The younger woman led her aunt toward the informal dinette near the kitchen. The two women settled into two chairs at the table.

Stacey suddenly looked stricken. “Oh my gosh,” she said, “where are my manners! Aunt Delia would you like something? Coffee, tea?”

“Coffee if you have it made,” she said. “It’s the one addiction I still can plead guilty to.” Stacey smiled, and headed into the kitchen. She put together a new pot of coffee and came back to sit across from the older woman while it brewed.

“So anyway, what brings you here today? How are you doing? I mean . . .” said Stacey.

“I’m better. I take my meds regularly and follow doctor’s orders and I’m doing better,” said Aunt Delia.

“That’s good to hear, Aunt Delia,” said Stacey

“As you know, early on I went up to see David in that awful place,” said Aunt Delia. The other woman nodded.

“Yes, well, as you also know I haven’t been able to get up there since because of my health: I can’t drive; it’s too far,” she said.

“Yes, I know,” said Stacey.

“But, Winnie has gotten up there, this past week actually,” said Aunt Delia.

“Winnie?” said Stacey.

“Winifred Clark, the lawyer that handled David’s part in your divorce, and helped out Mr. Ferguson some in his criminal trial too,” said Aunt Delia. “She and I have been in contact for some time.”

“Oh yes, I remember her,” said Stacey.

“The news isn’t good,” said Aunt Delia.

“Huh? What news?” said Stacey.

“David’s in a bad way, Stacey, a very bad way. Winnie, Miss Clark, has seen fit to confide in me things that David told her not to reveal. But, being the good person that she is, she took it upon herself to speak to me, as she said, in David’s best interests.”

“Aunt Delia, what’s happened to him?”

“He’s in the prison infirmary. He was gang raped. He lost so much blood that he was actually in danger of dying. The good news is that he has survived, but it was a close thing and the prison establishment is trying to minimize it, the crime that is,” she said.

“What!” said Stacey.

“Yes, evidently two guards stood around laughing while he was being raped by several men, inmates. The two guards were allowed to quit to avoid prosecution.

“David initially needed reconstructive surgery, to, well, his rectum; that in addition to treatment for other serious injuries. Best guess? He’ll be in the infirmary for another month according to Winnie,” said Aunt Delia.

“Aunt Delia, all of that is just awful. I feel for David. I really do. But, what can I do or Ronald?” said Stacey.

“Winnie is going to try to get him an early release date. She’s not sure if she can be successful, but she is going to try. She might ask you and Ronald if you could at least guarantee that he’d have a job if she is able to in fact get him an early parole,” said Aunt Delia.

“Aunt Delia, I’m sure we could work out something for him in that regard. But—David . . .?”

“Yes, yes, I know. He’s been bitter and angry about everything that has happened to him and all. But, I think he’s mellowed some over these past several years, and maybe the carrot of an early parole contingent on him being able to find a job would see him willing to work for Ronald’s business in some capacity, almost any capacity is what I think,” she said.

Stacey nodded. “Well, if that’s so, let his lawyer, Miss Clark, know that we will see to it he is gainfully employed,” said Stacey.

“Good, good, that is very good to hear. I know you and he and Ronald, well, things haven’t been so good. But, maybe this, situation, might get things back to something resembling normal,” she said. Stacey nodded.

“I hope so,” she said.

******

She looked over at her husband who’d taken on a pensive look. “Well,” said Stacey.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Ronald. “We’ll make the offer. But, the question then remains, will be accept it?”

“Aunt Delia seems to think that he will. I can’t imagine that he hates us so much that he’d turn down a chance for early release from prison,” she said.

“Maybe,” he said. “Anyway, we’ll make the offer. Actually, I’m going to ask you to do that, I mean if he gets out. He hates me, you, he only misses and wants.”

“Hah, if only that were true. I think he hates me too if not as much as he hates you,” she said.

“How soon do you think he might get out, I mean if he does,” he said.

“Don’t know. Aunt Delia didn’t say, but I don’t think she knew anyway. The lawyer is working on it, but how soon she’ll make the formal request or whatever? I don’t know about that either,” she said.

“You know there’s one other thing that might cause problems,” he said.

“Jenna?” she said.

“Yes, how do you think that she’s going to react to him being out? I mean she saw him kill three men right before her eyes?” he said.

“He did it, at least ostensibly, to save her,” she said.

“Yes, ostensibly, but I don’t think that that was the case. I think he did it to get some relief from all of his pent up anger. Anger directed toward us. Those guys, druggies and bad guys that they were notwithstanding, were just in a very bad place at a very bad time. He murdered them, Stacey. My brother, and yes he is still that to me, is a killer, a murderer. I don’t think he’d do anything like that again, but who knows really,” he said.

She suddenly turned pale. “I mean you think . . .” she started.

“No, no, I’m not afraid of him or of him hurting any of us, us being you and me, not really; but I do intend to be cautious nonetheless,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and she shivered.

******

“Yes, honey, he is hurt. But he still doesn’t want to see any of us until he gets out; well, except evidently our Aunt Delia,” said Stacey.

“But Aunt Delia said . . .” started Jenna.

“Aunt Delia said you should try and write to him not to go up to see him,” said Ronald Carter. Jenna sagged back in her seat on the couch. She nodded.

“Okay. I will write him, but I don’t know why, after all of this time, that he won’t let us come and see him. It makes no sense to me,” said Jenna.

“I think he is ashamed of what he did, Jenna,” said Ronald. He killed three men and he is paying for that and he deserves to pay for it, but he just can’t find it in him to see us under, well, under his current circumstances. Okay?”

The man didn’t notice the look in the eyes of his hearer. Jenna turned and walked out of the room and upstairs. She had some thinking to do. What daddy Ronald had said was true, she knew, but maybe, if she just showed up, up there at the prison, he’d let her see him this time. She had to think hard about that. It had been too long, and she felt worse than she ever had knowing, as she now did, that he was in a bad way in the hospital.

She knew what she had to do, what she would do! She’d go to see that lawyer, daddy David’s lawyer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 2013

It’d been a long day and Winnifred Clark was bushed. She was looking forward to a night kicking back, maybe stop at the Silver Spur for a drink or two before actually going home.

The knock on her office door surprised her. She frowned. It was after closing. The “We’re Closed” sign was already prominent in the opaque glass at the front of her suite of offices. She went to the door and opened it.

“Jenna? Jenna Carter?” she said. She’d met the young woman a number of times but not in the last several years. But, here she was.

“Yes, Miss Clark. May I come in for a moment? Please?” she said. She older woman stepped aside and indicated with a motion of her hand that the younger one should enter.

“Certainly, come in,” she said.

Seated, the older woman could see that the younger one was uncomfortable. A moment passed before she broke the ice.

“Jenna? Something you needed to tell me, ask me?” She said.

“Miss Clark, my auntie told me that my daddy David is in the hospital,” said Jenna.

“Yes, yes he is,” said Winnie.

“Well, I’d like to go and see him, but he has told me, told all of us, that he didn’t want any visitors up there at the prison,” she said. “But, if he’s hurting . . .”

“Yes, yes, I know how you feel. But, except for your auntie, he is adamant about having no visitors while he is a prisoner up there,” she said.

“It’s all my fault Miss Clark. I need to see him. For a long time I just put those kinds of thoughts aside and tried not to dwell on things, well, you know. I just tried to get on with things. But, now he’s hurt. My dad is hurt and I need to see him,” she said.

“It’s not your fault, Jenna. Your dad made a mistake and he’s being punished for that. Yes, I know it was because you were hanging around with the wrong crowd and all; but in the end he didn’t have to kill those men, not all of them anyway. They were bad men, it is true, but they didn’t need to die for their crimes.

“All of that said, your dad is a good and gentle man at heart. He’ll get out of jail one of these days, and he’ll be able to start over. When that day comes, he’ll need you to support him emotionally, believe me. Jenna, I’ve seen a lot of that over the years. He definitely will need your support. He’s going to be a very different man when he gets out than when he went in, and he will need tons of TLC if I’m any judge,” she said.

“It is my fault Miss Clark. Oh my, never mind, I have to go,” said Jenna. She all but jumped up and ran out leaving the older woman to wonder.

Winnie Clark, sensed something, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Something wasn’t right, for sure something wasn’t right. Why was Jenna Carter so adamant that she was at fault for her father being in prison? True, it was to intervene to get her out of a bad situation that the whole terrible scene had gone down, but was that all there was to it? Yes, that had to be it, but . . .?

She was working on his parole. It did look promising. The prison was responsible for what had happened to him in there, to David Carter. They could be sued, and the guards prosecuted for negligence maybe even as co-perpetrators in the case of the guards. Yes, she was pretty sure that David Carter would soon be walking out into the sunlight. The gang rape that put him in the infirmary actually looked to be the vehicle that would get him out. The question was in what condition would he be in once he did get out?

She’d seen any number of cons get released and have little or no life worth living after the fact. She gotten to know the man over the years, as she made the mandatory visits a lawyer made to advocate for his situation inside and his opportunities for parole: these at the behest of his case lawyer Nathan Ferguson. She was perhaps more assiduous in his case than in most others she’d had to deal with because of the gentle nature that the man exhibited. She’d actually grown to like the man. His crime was awful, but she could rationalize his irrationality exhibited in the heat of the moment that awful day some six years and more gone now.

She’d be talking to him soon. The parole board would be meeting in one month to decide his fate. Yes, she’d be talking to him for sure.

******

She lay passively beneath him as he continued to screw her. She smiled up at him periodically as he slowly drove his eight inch cock into her. She couldn’t help but think about her other man, her David, and yes and again he was still that on some level, about how he had been raped and beaten to give pleasure to other men, evil men. She felt guilty about the pleasure she felt being with Ronald, her Ronald. He was wonderful as a bed partner, far better than her David. But, David had been good too, in other ways. She was still so sorry for hurting him so.

Trying to get him to accept his true role, his biologically defined role, as Jenna’s uncle instead of her father had been the worst for her David; she knew that now. And, Ronald in spite of everything deserved to be Jenna’s father, her real father; he’d done more for her than David ever had or could. But, in the end, it had been David, albeit badly, who had bailed Jenna out of a bad situation. She made a pact with herself to try her best to help him when he got out of prison; she owed him that; yes she did.

The man on top of her sped up. He was ramming her with everything he had, almost hurting her but in a good way a supreme way. She felt herself arching up to meet his savage thrusts. He was crushing her with his arms wrapped around her torso oh so tightly: the bull mastering the female.

******

He looked back as he stood in the doorway of their bedroom. She sure was beautiful. Taking her from his brother had been the lowest. Claiming his daughter back from his brother? Not so much. She was his. Yes, he’d agreed back then before the killings to allow David to regain a piece of his fatherhood status back. He hadn’t liked it much then and he would like it even less now if the man did get out soon like seemed to be the case. He was a killer. He really didn’t want him around her, but, she was an adult now and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop her from consorting with him if she was of a mind to.