I shake myself like a dog, as if that will shake the thoughts loose and break the circle.
I’m patted down before I follow the officer through a door to the meeting area, or whatever it’s called. I’ve never visited Dad before. And he never visited me the times I was in jail before he was caught. This is all new and should distract me, only it’s a prison, and though not the same one I was sent to, time and again, the sounds, smells, the officers in sight, the uniforms... they throw me right back down that memory lane.
And a new mantra forms: Stop thinking about your time in prison, about the nightmarish memories, the faces leering, the voices jeering for your death.
Memories distorted by drugs, I remind myself. Big amounts of drugs.
Almost lethal.
I flick the images away from my mind, the remembered sensations of falling and fading into nothing, but they won’t go away that easily.
Mantras are useless, let me tell you. By the time I’m sat down at a small table, in a room full of similar small tables and inmates talking to their loved ones, I’m sweating bullets and I can’t hear my own thoughts over the roaring in my ears.
Then Dad walks in and that’s another whole can of worms in the shape of a man. I hadn’t realized I’d feel like someone sucker-punched me just by seeing him approach. I bet if I hadn’t skipped breakfast, I’d be hurling all over the little table and nondescript carpet.
Dad narrows his eyes at me and takes a seat, his massive frame dwarfing the chair. It creaks ominously under his weight.
“Ross,” he says evenly. “Finally decided to visit your old man?”
I lick dry lips, and no proper reply comes to mind. How about... Glad to see you don’t have your ax with you? You left me with scars that can’t seem to heal? I hate you?
“This isn’t a social visit,” I finally grind out.
“Oh? Did you bring me cake?”
Thrown off by the question, the presumption, I open my mouth and close it before I manage a dry “No.”
“Then why the hell are you here?”
“Seriously, that’s all you have to say to me after trying to fucking kill me?” It comes out in a rush, catching me by surprise, laced with bitterness and such fury it stings my throat.
Oops. Guess I’m still torn up over that. Go figure...
He just leans back in his creaking chair and stares at me, face expressionless. After a small lifetime has passed, he smirks. “Oh come on, Ross. It wasn’t personal.”
Not personal? Killing your wife? Trying to kill me?
I bite the words back. Fuck, I’m torn between wishing Luna was here with me, and being fucking thankful she’s not, not to see how off-balance I am around him.
“I’m here to ask you,” I have to stop and take a breath, “who the other victim was. The other woman.”
A familiar cruel smile twists his mouth. “And why should I tell you?” He leans forward, as if to impart a secret. “The police don’t know. They couldn’t figure it out. They have nothing.”
“I found the letters,” I say. “And the earrings.”
Something happens to his face. It warps and wrenches into something hideous, animalistic, fury and madness fighting for dominance. “Catherine,” he hisses, then, “You won’t find her!”
And he reaches for me.
I remember that face from my nightmares, from my memories as he lifted the knife to end my life—and that’s what sends me jerking back in the last second. He manages to snag the front of my T-shirt, though, lifts me to my feet, and with his other hand he backhands me so hard I almost go over sideways. I taste rusty metal in my mouth and I know it’s blood. He split my lip.
My head is ringing, and I’m hanging in his grip, my legs unsteady. “What about the boy? What about your son? Where is he? Do you even know?
“Catherine and Finn,” he says, and I’m not sure he realizes he’s saying the names. There doesn’t seem to be anyone behind his eyes that are so similar to mine, no human, no Jasper Jones. They’re hard and flat like glass. “Catherine and Finn...”
“You!” someone yells. “Let him go. Officers, in here! Get him back to his cell.”
“You won’t find her,” Dad says to me, or to himself, hard to tell. He releases me. “You can’t find her! I took her earrings! Her favorite earrings!”