Except I have a feeling I know what Grandma would have said. She would’ve told me not to come. That this is exactly what he wants, and I’m playing right into his hands.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
I jerk my eyes up from the steering wheel at the words. I look up and a man is standing by my car in a guard’s uniform, with a gray short-sleeved dress shirt with the words Oregon State Penitentiary embroidered on the breast. The sleeves are short enough to show off some pretty terrifying biceps.
“Hi.” I attempt to keep the tremor out of my voice. “I’m here to visit one of the inmates.”
The guard narrows his eyes at me. Finally, he nods and gives me instructions on parking. As I grow ever closer to the prison, the sick feeling in my stomach intensifies.
This is a mistake.
Turn back while you still can.
I’m glad to see that they take security very seriously at the penitentiary. I have to go through a metal detector, but in addition to that, I also get a pat-down. They even ask me to remove my shoes. When they’re completely satisfied I’m not carrying a big old gun, the guard gives me the okay to go on ahead.
“You’re going to see him through the glass,” he instructs me. “You pick up the phone on your side, he’llpick up his, and he’ll be able to hear you.”
“Okay,” I say.
The guard gives me a long look. “What do you want to see that piece of shit for?”
I can’t tell him the truth. What would they think about me if I said I was that monster’s daughter? I had thought that my identity would be plastered all over the Internet by now, but somehow my secret has stayed quiet. “I just have some questions for him. It’s… personal.”
The guard grunts but doesn’t question me further.
He leads me to a tiny narrow room where there’s a row of stools set up in front of numbered glass partitions. Each one has a phone attached to it. There’s a guard positioned in the room, watching all of the interactions. I feel uneasy about the fact that the guard will likely hear everything I have to say. I’m going to have to be careful.
I’m given the fourth kiosk. I sit down, my fingers drumming on the table in front of me. I can’t believe I’m about to see my father. After twenty-six years. It feels surreal.
I could still turn around and leave. This doesn’t have to happen.
But I know that I’m staying.
Before I left on this trip, I looked on the Internet for current photos of my father. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any less than twenty years old. So I have no idea what he’s going to look like. The last time I saw him, he was a big man with black hair like mine, a blandly handsome face, and penetrating eyes.
I assume he doesn’t look that way anymore. Even if hehadn’t been locked away in prison all those years, he would still look twenty-six years older than he did when I was a kid. I imagine he would still have the same handsome features although with more creases on his face. Maybe some salt and pepper hair. The same broad build and powerful hands. That’s how he looks in my head, whenever I imagine what he must look like now.
And then a guard leads him into the room.
I take a second to gawk at the man my father has become. He’s in his sixties now, but it’s still somehow a surprise that his formerly thick black hair has turned entirely gray—it’s sparse on top of his head and he’s got a bald patch in the back. He looks like he’s shrunk as well. I always remember him being so tall, but now he’s hunched over and he shuffles when he walks, although that’s likely due to the shackles on his feet. He doesn’t look like somebody capable of killing thirty women. He looks like a decrepit old man. He could easily be eighty years old.
The guard at his side points me out to him, but he doesn’t need it. Instantly, his eyes lock with mine. It is one thing about him that hasn’t changed at all—his dark eyes, the same color as mine. They haven’t aged at all.
His eyes never leave mine as he sits on the stool across from me. His skin is deeply wrinkled, and there’s an old scar running along his right jaw and one splitting his left eyebrow in half. I’ve heard that people who commit truly heinous crimes are beaten severely in prison, and I wonder what he went through over the years. In any case, the scars are long since healed. Nobody is beating up on this old man.
My father picks up the phone on his side just as I pickup mine. A ghost of a smile touches his lips as he leans forward.
“Hello, Nora.”
His voice sounds different, raspier than it used to be, but still achingly familiar. He still has that calm, even tone. He never lost his temper with me. My mother would get hysterical sometimes when I would do something wrong, but he never would. He never seemed to get upset. I used to like that about him.
“Hi,” I cough.
He takes a deep breath as his eyes rake over me, like he’s inhaling me. “It’s been a very long time, hasn’t it?”
“Yes…”
“You look beautiful, Nora.”
