I'll take anything my wife was willing to fucking give me, because the last thing I ever wanted was for Bee to crawl back into that fucking head of hers again and get lost under all the shit she kept buried in there.
At that very moment she was fading away before my eyes, but I needed her to be present, to be strong.
For Georgia.
For our family.
It killed me that I couldn't go to her, hold her in my arms and drag my Abby back to the surface, and, if necessary, I wasn't entirely against shaking the shit out of her until she refocused and emerged from the fog she retreated to when she just couldn't deal.
Dumb and fucking Dumber both drove off the same way they'd arrived. One at a time, tires spinning dramatically in the dirt, launching onto the street, their sirens invading every corner of the usually eerily quiet neighborhood. The wall of mangroves lining the road flashed blue and red as we passed.
Abby stood in the road and watched us drive off, her expressionless face shrinking smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror until she completely disappeared from sight.
I could feel my heart twisting in my chest, and I made a vow right then and there that no matter what happened as a result of these charges, I was going to find my way back to Bee and Georgia as soon as I could.
Breaking out of prison couldn't be that hard.
We turned toward the Matlacha Pass, the only bridge that connected the rest of the world to Coral Pines. Once we were over the bridge, the sheriff spoke to my reflection in the rearview mirror. "Why is it, Jake, that you don't seem surprised that you are being charged with my nephew’s murder?"
I shrugged. "Well, it's been a while since I jaywalked."
The sheriff shook his head. "Touche, Mr. Dunn. Too-fucking-shay," he said, rolling the window down just a crack. He lit a joint he’d retrieved from the center console. "All I'm saying, son, is that I'm hoping they fry your ass real good, hope some skin head with a hankering for blondes makes you his new girlfriend." He held the smoke in his lungs, not even bothering to blow it out the crack in the open window as he finished his little villain speech.
Or was he the good guy, and it was me who was the villain?
The lines between right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, were always blurred when it came to the comings and goings of the residents of Coral Pines.
You never knew who was going to save you.
Or who was going to kill you.
FOUR
In the back of my mind I always knew that no matter how careful I was, someday there was a possibility the shit I'd done would catch up with me in a very big way.
I knew that day had come when I found myself being led down a poorly lit concrete hallway wearing a scratchy orange jumpsuit, carrying an even scratchier blanket and pillow, into a cell much smaller than the new guest bathroom I'd just finished remodeling for Bee.
Inmates shouted over one another, their voices bouncing off the cement block walls of my cell, any one person indiscernible from the blended echoes of the masses. My eyes watered from the inescapable and overwhelming stench of backed up toilets and body odor.
Although my father had been dead over a year I could almost hear his 'I told you so's' from the grave.
Fuck you, Frank.
My mother, the eternal optimist when it came to me, used to tell me that the world expected great things from me, that my future held something terrific in it, and that someday I would realize my true potential. She usually gave me that speech while she was driving me home from the sheriff's station or from a stint in juvie.
She was sort of right all along. I'd realized my true potential a long time ago. There just wasn't anything terrific about it.
Horrific maybe. Terrific no.
I'm not glad she's dead, but I'm glad she would never see me caged up like the monster I was.
My father, Frank, never traveled on the same wavelength of thought my mother did. He always told me that my future held nothing more than a life behind the cold bars of a prison cell. It was laughable, because that drunken fuck might have been actually right for once.
The cell door slammed shut behind me. I set the blanket on the unmade top bunk. The guard locked my cage with one of the many keys on his retractable key chain attached to his belt.
"Welcome home, inmate," he said smugly, tipping up the brim of his baseball cap in mock salute, the cap read CORRECTIONS in big bold gold lettering across the front. The guard, whose brass nametag read ABBOT, sucked on his upper teeth with his tongue as if he'd just finished a big satisfying meal.
I wanted to fucking END him.
I leapt back to the cell door and grabbed a hold of the bars. Abbot gasped in surprise and fell back onto his boney ass. "You spook easy, don't ya, officer?" I growled, squatting down so we were eye to eye. His beady little eyes turned to black, the fear had caused his pupils to dilate.
I was very familiar with that look.
It was a look I quite enjoyed.
I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than just scare the little fucker. "It's so easy to be a smug little shit from the other side of the bars," I said coldly. "Why don't you come on in here with me, and say that sarcastic shit again?"
Even though Officer Abbot was obviously scared shitless, the truth of the matter was that he had the upper hand. I was securely locked into a windowless cage, and although he may have been on his ass, he was on his ass on the freedom side of the bars.
"Maybe I will, inmate." Abbot stood and brushed himself off. The cockiness in his tone wavered. Pointing at me with his nightstick, Abbot looked around to make sure no one had witnessed him almost pissing himself on the floor. "I'm watching you, inmate." He warned. "In here you an't nothin' more than a fucking number. You ain't even worthy of the name your mama gave ya, so if you choose act like a fucking animal, you're gonna be treated like a fucking animal."
With a final bucktoothed sneer, he walked off, dragging his night stick across the bars of my cell, then across all the other cells in the corridor, as he made his way to the only door at the end of the cell block. The inmates shouted obscenities at him as he passed without any sort of reaction from the guard. He signaled to another guard who sat on the other side of a glass partition. The red blinking light above the door temporarily turned green as he was buzzed through, disappearing from site, the door closed with a heavy click, the light above the door once again blinked red.
"Motherfucker," I mumbled, taking a long hard look at my new accommodations. I knew that doing what I'd done for as long as I'd done it, that I was possibly paving a path for myself that lead me right to a cell just like the one I found myself in.
In all honesty, it's a path I never truly thought I would ever be traveling.
If I had to bet money on how my life would end up, with either my early death, long before old age took hold, or a life behind bars, I would've placed my money on death every fucking time.
The DA, some nitwit named Sparrow, was seeking the death penalty, so I guess there was still time to win that bet after all.
I could die tomorrow, and it wouldn't mean jack shit to me. Death was one of the only certainties in this life. It's always been a comfort to me, knowing that since the moment we all first came into this world kicking and screaming, that we were all heading toward the same end.
Although once dead, some people would go in one direction while others, like me, will go in another.
Some of us still kicking and screaming.
The only thing that bothered me about the possibility of dying, was that I wouldn't be around to protect those I vowed to provide for and keep safe. That the time I'd spent with the only two people I didn't feel indifferent about was entirely too short.
Abby. Georgia. My wife. My daughter.
Team redhead as Georgia called them.
My family.
Over the past year, my life seemed like a dream. A dream someone like me was unworthy of even having. Every day of my life was a gift I knew I didn't deserve but selfishly accepted anyway.
Being thrown into a cell was a harsh reminder that life could be both a horrible nightmare and a terrific dream. But they both had something in common.
Eventually, no matter the dream, you always woke up.
FIVE
I'd been in my cell for less than a day, staring at the fucking wall when yet another correctional officer rapped on the bars of my cell with his night stick. "Let's go, let's go!" he shouted impatiently.
"What's with you guys and that shit?" I asked, rubbing my temples. Jail had seeped into my head and started giving me a migraine.
He ignored me. "Let's go, inmate." He unlocked my cell and produced a pair of handcuffs. "Turn around. You have a visitor."
The guard scuffed me, shoving me into a large bright room filled with circular tables. He left me at the door, and I was left to find my visitor on my own.
Inmates, decked out in the same orange prison attire I was sporting, sat next to or across from visitors and people who were very obviously lawyers. At a table in the far corner a woman sat crying, holding the hand of an inmate with a spider web tattoo on the back of his neck while an excited toddler with dark curls ran around the table screaming like he was in Disney instead of a prison. A couple at another table argued, the woman pointing at the man accusingly with a long curved fingernail, the inmate she was visiting appeared disinterested in whatever she was chastising him for.
I knew where Bee would be before I spotted her. I shifted between the tables and made my way to a quiet corner in the back of the room, the one most shadowed by the trees outside the high window. Bee was perched on one of the round stools attached to the table, her back against the wall, hugging her knees to her chest, chewing on her thumbnail, staring out into space.