Tim's father climbed out. He'd sweated through his dress shirt, something Tim had never seen him do. He pulled on his jacket, fastening the inner button with an expert tweak of his fingers. Erect and dignified, his father took a few steps. He paused, turned his face to the sun, closed his eyes.
He cleared his throat. "Maybe sometime I could meet my grandson."
"We'll see."
"Maybe he should see the world's ugly parts. Give him a shot to turn out better than me or you."
"I'd say that's a statistical inevitability, wouldn't you?"
With perfect posture his father started for the door. A correctional officer emerged.
"Move it along, pal. Door locks on the hour." The CO's face shifted with recognition when he looked at Tim, and he lessened the aggressiveness of his stance.
Tim stayed by his father's side. They reached the CO, the door.
Tim's father turned to face him. "I could count on you, Timmy. Despite everything, I could always count on you."
He offered his hand, and Tim shook it, and then the CO took him into custody with a respectful nod at Tim and led him away. He did not look back.
Dazed, Tim walked back and sat in his Explorer. He stared at the barbed wire, the chain link, the sally-port gate. Ten minutes passed. Then another ten.
He turned over the engine, but rather than heading for the gates, he drove around to the other side of the facility to the visiting area. He got out of the Explorer and started toward the building. The inmates were in the yard, pumping iron, bullshitting, gathering in protective clusters. In the wedge of shadow against the wall, there he was. Tim wasn't certain at first, but then Kindell stepped out to pick a rock from the dirt, and in the sunlight there was no question.
A pedophile and a child murderer-he wasn't supposed to last a month in there, let alone four years. For those four years, Tim had wanted him dead. He wanted him dead as much as ever. But even if Kindell were dead, he wouldn't be gone. He'd still be there. Always there.
His skin looked gray and hung on loose flesh. He'd put on weight-a lot of weight-his face blown wide around the familiar inexpressive eyes.
Whatever Tim had hoped to feel, he did not. Standing in the beating sun of the parking lot, he sensed a hollowness, not inside him but all around, as if he lay on the brink of a void too vast to comprehend. He grasped his own unimportance and, by extension, the insignificance of the man opposite the fence. It left him feeling dwarfed, though by what, precisely, he was not certain. There was a great horror in it, to be sure, but also a faint ray of a greater freedom he'd yet to encounter.
Kindell claimed his rock in a fist and withdrew back into shadow.
Tim looked at the visitor entrance, but, suddenly and clearly, he knew that he wouldn't go in, wouldn't confront Kindell through a mesh screen.
Tim thought of the vulnerability of his living child. He pictured the familiar scenarios-the kidnapping, the act of God, the proverbial bus. In every moment a hundred things can go wrong. But moment after moment they don't.
Right now Dray would be packing a picnic for the park. Tyler on the kitchen floor, wearing Evel Knievel and applying a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid to a knee scrape that had healed three days ago. Bear and Michelle Westin, D.D.S., on their morning walk, Boston running laps around them, an endless loop of Rhodesian Ridgeback.
Tim turned and headed back to the Explorer.
Ninety Days After Walker's Death
Kaiyer walk hisself."
"Okay, bub." Tim still guided Tyler through the penitentiary's outermost door. On its backswing the glass caught a reflection of the stern razor wire capping the double chain links. Tim paused, taking in the grounds. The place was removed from time, somehow. It seemed not a speck of dirt had shifted in the months since Tim had delivered the boy's grandfather.
Ahead the sally-port gate, the guard tower, COs with rifles.
And Dray leaning against the grille of her Blazer, arms crossed, face tilted to the sun. She took note of their accelerating progress back across the empty visitor lot. Tyler's steps grew shorter and choppier.
Halfway there he said, "Daddy up."
Tim held out his thumbs until the tiny hands grasped them, then lifted his son, seating him against his side.
They reached the Blazer and stopped. Tim took a breath and exhaled hard.
Dray said, "I bet."
Tyler squirmed a bit, so Tim set him down. Ty picked at the Scooby-Doo Band-Aid across the toe of his sneaker. Dray studied them, her face proud and tender, the sun shining straight through her ice green eyes.
"C'mon," she said. "Let's get you boys home."