Beth put her driver’s license, keys and manila envelope in a tray ready to be x-rayed. She smiled at the guard, Jackson, according to his name badge. When he did not return her smile she remembered why, she wasn’t on his side today. He didn’t know they were playing for the same team. Today she was just a random woman visiting an inmate.
She sat down at the Formica table closest to the patio doors, where there was plenty of natural light to counteract the effects of the fluorescent lights. There was a large courtyard, complete with a play structure for children. That was new.
She hated doing interviews in windowless prison rooms. She always left with a headache. Usually she could hope to leave with a confession or at least a strong lead, so then it was worth it. Today there was not going to be a payoff, so she wasn’t going to endure a migraine.
The room filled up quickly, anxious families huddled around tables, waiting. Beth stared past them into the courtyard and into the rolling golden hills. Golden, is what she thought of them when she was younger, now they looked more scorched, like the sun had burned the life out of them, but they were still pretty all the same.
She stood when the guard ushered him in. There was a look of confusion painted on his worn features, followed by recognition, and then finally a smile. “Beth.” Her name sounded like a question. He looked different, of course he did, over a quarter of a century had passed since she had seen him, but it was more than that. He seemed smaller now, his shoulders narrower; his frame slighter.
Beth could not bring herself to return his smile. What should she call him? Joe? Mr. Cummings? The dickhead who broke my mom’s heart? Dad?
“Hi,” was all she could say.
He moved towards her as if he were going to hug her. She held out her arm instead, offering him a hand to shake. It had been a long time, the best part of thirty years. She had stopped making the weekly treks to visit when she was nine. One Saturday morning, she refused and she never looked back. Her mom and sister continued but once she made her decision, her dad was dead to her, cut out like a cancer. Her family knew better than to discuss her dad with her. When they visited, they kept it quiet. The Thomson family had a strict don’t ask don’t tell policy in place when it came to dear old dad.
His smile widened. “You look so much like your mom.”
Beth shook her head. She didn’t. She looked like him. There was no denying that now. His hair was lighter, bleached from the sun and the passage of time. His skin was a soft golden hue of a well-worn baseball mitt. Between his grey-blue eyes, the exact shade of hers, were deep ridges. Mindlessly she rubbed the furrow between her own brows.
“How’s your mom?” he asked. He took the chair across from her.
“She’s fine,” Beth said but then she shook her head. “No she’s not. She’s not fine. She has Alzheimer’s, she’s not ever going to be fine again.” Beth fought the overwhelming feeling that nothing was going to be fine again. Maybe things had never been fine in her life, but once upon a time she was better at pretending. “I don’t know how much Paige told you.”
Beth turned and looked out the window: a little boy was being pushed on a swing by his dad. She wanted to get home. Maybe she should not have come. She wasn’t sure why she had come. She told herself it was for Paige, because her sister had not let go of their dad. She didn’t even know until her sister was murdered, that she had been traveling to California every two months to visit their father in prison. It wasn’t until Beth had gone through her sister’s things that she discovered the truth, in the form of letters, several years’ worth, neatly filed. Everything about Paige was neat and orderly. Even in death. Everything was laid out, filed, and organized.
When Beth died, some poor soul was going to have to sort through a cluster fuck of paperwork. Her system made sense to her, but no normal person would understand.
Beth suddenly remembered why she was here. She thumbed the glossy cover of Paige’s funeral program. She stopped herself before handing it to her dad. She couldn’t just hand it to him and say, “Your kid, the one who actually liked you, is dead and it is my fault.” That would be cruel. She had no loyalty to this man, this stranger in front of her, but he was a person. She folded the paper and returned it to her lap.
She would tell him about her mom first. Give him the bad news before she gave him the horrible news. “Mom doesn’t have long now. She can’t speak any more. She can’t feed herself. She’s not mom any more really.” Beth shrugged her shoulders. That was the long and short of it. The woman in the nursing home in Texas wasn’t really her mom. Ruth Thomson was loving and vibrant and smart, so smart. The person they were talking about was a shell that bore a passing resemblance to her mom.
“I’m sorry.” Her father reached across the table to take her hand. It was then that Beth saw it, the shamrock tattoo, with a 6 in every leaf and the letters A and B below.
Aryan Brotherhood.
Her father was a member of a white supremacist group. She shouldn’t be surprised. People needed affiliations to survive in prison. He was white after all, so it wasn’t likely that he join the Mexican Mafia or the 415s, so the Aryan Brotherhood was a logical choice. But still it disappointed her. Her husband and daughter were Mexican after all, but he didn’t know that. She was a stranger to him as much as he was to her.
Beth cleared her throat. She looked down into her lap at the pile of photos she had brought. She handed him one of her mom that she had taken at the River Walk in San Antonio before her mom had gotten too sick to live at home. Beth had tried to take care of her as long as she could. But in the end it wasn’t safe and the decision to put her mom in a home was made by social services. Beth could keep Alejandra or her mom…and she chose Alejandra.
She smiled down at the picture. She was so pretty. And that wasn’t her bias talking; Ruth Thomson was as beautiful inside and out. Beth handed her dad the photo. When he took it, his fingers brushed hers.
She didn’t hate him.
The realization hit her with the force of a ball bearing being shot into a concrete wall. She expected to hate him. He was a criminal and a pathetic one at that, just a shitty bank robber. And he couldn’t even get that right. An undercover police officer was shot in the process, so her dad had a felony murder assault added to the charge. It didn’t matter that Joe Cummings had no intention of hurting anyone that morning. Someone died and he had to pay.
He had torn their family apart, broken every promise he had ever made, ruined her mom’s life, but she didn’t hate him. She felt nothing…except a shadow of sadness. He had ruined his own life too, not just her mom’s.
“Can I keep this?” he asked.
Beth nodded. “I brought it for you. I have a few others. I don’t know how much Paige told you about things.” A quarter of a century was a lot of ground to cover. She wasn’t sure where to start.
“Paige told me just about everything. Both in Texas now. My daughters, the vet and the big shot special agent.”
There was no mistaking the pride in his voice. He didn’t deserve to be proud of them. He hadn’t contributed to their success in any way; it all came down to their hard work and sacrifices, but Beth wasn’t going to take it away from him. Everything else had been taken away; he had nothing, so she would allow him his misplaced pride.
“How is your daughter?”
Beth’s gaze shot up. “She told you about Alejandra?”
“Yeah. You’re a mom. I’m a grandpa.”
Beth shifted in her seat. Technically he was, but not really, not in any meaningful way. She glanced again at his tattoos. “She is Mexican, my daughter. So is my husband.” She was giving him the opportunity to say something racist,