Текст книги "Blood Men "

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

chapter twelve

It’s dark by the time we get home. It’s a three-quarter moon. It throws white light over the house and reflects off the front windows and makes the house look very empty. I park the car in the driveway and can’t be bothered putting it in the garage. Jodie’s car is still parked in town near her work and can stay there a while longer yet. I grab the mail and take Sam inside. One of the things about the new house we were going to get was it had an adjoining garage. It was something we both wanted, because of the brutal Christchurch winters.

Jodie doesn’t have to worry about that anymore, now, does she . . .

“Shut up,” I whisper.

“What, Daddy?” Sam asks, her voice sleepy, her eyes half closed.

“Nothing, honey,” I say, and I carry her inside.

The house has gotten tidier over the last couple of days mainly because I found myself wandering through the rooms, never really sure what to do. Sometimes I’d spend hours in front of the TV, watching the news and staring at whatever else was on. Other times I’d surf the net, looking for updates on the case. Most of the time people would show up to spend time with us. Sam kept mostly to herself. Mogo would show up for food and nothing else. I’d clean the house sporadically, sometimes cleaning the same room only an hour after I’d last done it. I’d play with Sam. We’d watch TV together. We’d sit outside together. It was tough.

I carry Sam down to her bedroom. I keep searching for a glimpse of my wife, a shadow, a movement somewhere, something to let me know in some way she is still here. I lay Sam on her bed—Disney characters scattered in the pattern of the bedspread. She’s asleep again. I get her into her pajamas. She wakes a little but is too tired to help.

I grab a beer from the fridge. I never bought any, but since Saturday friends have been showing up to share their sorrow with me, the women bringing wine, the men, beer, and in the beginning I thought I had enough to last me a lifetime, but now I’m not so sure. Now I think there might only be enough here for a few days. I settle in front of the TV and wait for the news to come on. The bank robbery, the funerals, they don’t even lead the news anymore. The lead story is about a seventy-five-year-old woman who, in the parking lot of a shopping mall, mistook her car for an identical-colored and almost identical-shaped vehicle parked next to it. The owner, seeing her putting her key into his lock, rushed over and shoved her so hard she fell over, hit her head on the sidewalk, and was pronounced dead at the scene. The second story is about a turned-over truck that allowed a few dozen sheep to escape on a notorious stretch of highway in the North Island. Nobody was killed. Then come the funerals, snippets from them both in a montage with slow classical music playing over the top of it, like it’s a movie preview. The coffins are different colors and styles, and everybody is dressed smartly. My daughter gets a lot of attention—it shows us following the coffin. Another daughter—three times Sam’s age—follows the other coffin. Then at the end of the story a brief report saying the men haven’t been captured, and that any member of the public with information is asked to call the hotline listed below.

I finish the beer and grab another. I open up the mail. There are two letters from the bank. The first one is brief.

DEAR MR. HUNTER,

IN WHAT MUST BE A VERY DIFFICULT TIME FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, WE AT SOUTH PACIFIC BANK WOULD LIKE TO OFFER OUR SINCEREST CONDOLENCES FOR THE LOSS OF YOUR WIFE.

THE TRAGIC INCIDENT THAT HAPPENED OUTSIDE THE BANK HAS TOUCHED THE ENTIRE STAFF AND, NEEDLESS TO SAY, YOU AND YOUR FAMILY REMAIN IN OUR THOUGHTS AND OUR PRAYERS.

SINCERELY,

DEAN WELLINGTON

I read the letter a couple of times, looking at the words Dean Wellington used. He managed to sum the entire murder of my wife as an “incident” and convey his horror at it all in two paragraphs. I wonder if he used the words “outside the bank” specifically, hoping it will absolve any responsibility the branch has toward what happened.

The second letter isn’t as brief. It’s obviously a form letter with a brief scrawl of a signature at the bottom. It’s been overnighted down from Auckland, meaning they must have gotten to work on our loan application within hours of Jodie dying.

MR. EDWARD HUNTER,

UNFORTUNATELY, AS YOU KNOW, THE PROPERTY MARKET AT THIS CURRENT TIME IS EXTREMELY VOLATILE, WHICH REQUIRES US TO TIGHTEN THE CRITERIA ON WHICH WE BASE OUR HOME LOANS.

BASED ON THESE CRITERIA, WE ARE UNABLE TO APPROVE YOUR APPLICATION AT THIS TIME.

I read on. The letter goes on for another page, listing some of the criteria that I no longer fit. In the end I skim over the details and go right to the end.

AS THE MARKET IS IN A CONSTANT STATE OF CHANGE, WE WOULD BE HAPPY TO REVIEW THIS DECISION AT A LATER DATE. IN THE MEANTIME, WE HOPE THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO ASSIST YOU WITH ALL YOUR BANKING NEEDS.

YOURS SINCERELY,

KATIE HUGHES

I read the letter a second time, finishing off my second beer, the anger burning inside me, and yet I feel no disbelief at all. Katie Hughes must have typed this letter up pretty damn fast. I check the postmark and see it got posted on Saturday. I wonder if Hughes or Wellington spent an expensive Friday afternoon with lawyers to see where they stood on the whole “incident.” I finish a third beer while flicking through the phone book.

I’m not sure why I do it, but I look Dean Wellington up and write down his address before finishing off a third beer and deciding it might be about time to head off to bed.

chapter thirteen

I wake up and everything is as it should be. My wife is alive. We’ve bought the new house. Sam is Sam and Mogo is being Mogo. Then those thoughts become blurred, my bedroom comes into focus, and Jodie isn’t in bed next to me. I reach over and her side is cold, untouched, and then it all comes racing back, as it did yesterday morning, and every morning since the . . . for some reason I think accident but that’s the wrong word. Since the what?

The execution the voice says, and I agree, though Dean Wellington would say “incident.”

It’s after eight already. Normally Sam would be up watching cartoons and making a mess, but this morning she’s still asleep, the last few days . . .

Since the execution . . .

The last few days since the execution she’s been sleeping later.

I sit on the porch and eat cereal directly out of the packet. The Tuesday-morning sun is slowly climbing into the sky. There’s a truck and a cherry picker out in the street about half a block away, motors and chainsaws making plenty of noise as they trim tops of trees away from the power lines. My head is slightly fuzzy and my mouth feels like I spent time last night licking the carpet. The cereal is dry and sticks to the roof of it. I think about work and the file I should be working on, and whether not going in today and no longer giving a damn about it means I no longer have a job. I wonder what kind of letter Dean Wellington would send if he knew I was dropping from one income down to none.

The phone rings and I head inside for it, wanting to stop it from waking Sam.

“Jack?”

The voice is familiar in the way you can flick on the radio and hear a song you haven’t heard in twenty years and know how it goes. When you hear that song, your mind starts scrambling, taking you back to a time when you heard it last. Good memory or bad, you’re in that moment again, the smells, the sounds, the sights, they’re all there.

“Who is this?” I ask, and I remember the handcuffs, the police, the smile on his face when he watched me from the back of the police car. I remember the dog, I remember the weight of the piece of steak in the plastic bag. I can feel the cold sunlight, my school uniform, my mother holding my hand and holding Belinda’s hand. I can remember the neighbors pouring out of their houses, the women with their hands over their mouths in shock, the men shaking their heads, the long line of police cars, dozens of cops, all showing up in force as if to arrest a small army. I remember the media vans, the photographers.

“Jack, it’s me. It’s your father.”

I don’t say anything. The kitchen disappears, the world disappears, all fading away as the front door of my childhood home appears, the policemen, the disgust on their faces. Of course that childhood home is gone now. About three months after Mum died, when I was living with Belinda at my grandparents’, somebody went along and set fire to that house. Nobody was ever caught. I always thought maybe Belinda did it, but it could have been anybody. Dad hurt a lot of people.

“I’m calling to—”

“I don’t care why you’re calling,” I say, and I tighten my hand on the phone and for some reason, for some freaky-shit-get-the-hell-out-of-here kinda reason, I don’t hang up.

“I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am.”

I let his sentence hang and he waits patiently. I guess my father is used to being patient.

“You’ve had twenty years to apologize,” I say. “Anyway, you’re saying it to the wrong person, and you picked the worst damn time to do it.”

“Not . . . not about the past, Jack. I’m ringing to tell you how sorry I am about Jodie. I wish things had been different. For her. For you. For everybody.”

“How the hell do you know about Jodie?” I ask. “How do you know a damn thing about me or Jodie?”

“This isn’t the moon they’re keeping us locked away on, Jack.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What?”

“Jack. Don’t call me Jack.”

“Oh? What am I supposed to call you?”

“Don’t call me anything. What the hell do you want? You ringing to tell me you know what it’s like to lose somebody? Like the way you lost Mum and Belinda?”

“I know you’re angry at me.”

“No. How could I possibly be angry at you? You’ve really been there for me, a real role model.”

“Jack . . .”

“What do you want, Dad?” I ask, immediately nauseous at how comfortable the word “Dad” feels in my mouth. I’m nine years old all over again. The photo that told the world I was the son of a serial killer flashes into my mind. The memory turns as black and white as the picture. I’m holding on to my father, the police are taking him away, and my mum is trying to separate us, black-and-white tears spilling down my black-and-white face. The policemen weren’t friendly toward any of us. None of them wanted to touch me or push me away, as if they feared the killer gene they were so sure I would inherit could contaminate them, that it would jump from me and land on their hands and burrow under their skin. It would tell them bad things and make them suck on the end of a pistol at the end of a long tiring day. They looked at my mother and my sister and me with open hatred, so sure all of us had been in on the action, that Dad had brought the hookers home for the holidays, that we’d taken turns at draining the life out of them, raping them, a good-ol’-splasharoo in blood, the son and daughter committing the sins of the mother and father.

“I want to see you,” my dad says, snapping me out of the memory, and my skin crawls, not at his request, but in the undeniable knowledge that yes indeed I’m going to go and see him.

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I’m busy.”

“It’s important.”

“Being a father is important. Not killing eleven women is important. You staying locked up is important.”

“I’m still your father. You can deny it as much as you want, but—”

“I do deny it.”

“I’m sorry the way it worked out.”

“You make it sound like you had a different plan. How many more would have died, Dad? Another dozen?”

“We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

“Go to hell,” I say.

“I’m already there,” he says. “Please, son, it’s important I see you,” he says, and he hangs up, and I’m angry at his arrogance as he leaves me holding the phone. I’m scared at the prospect of seeing him, yet curious too, and perhaps, yes, just a spark of this—perhaps a little excited.

“Who was on the phone, Daddy?” Sam asks.

I didn’t even know she was in the kitchen. I turn toward her. She’s still wearing her pajamas, the teddy bear clutched under her arm, and for the first time I realize that she’s hardly put that teddy bear down since her mother died. The bear’s name is Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff, and I bought him for Sam’s first birthday. The bear has fared rather well over the five and a half years since then, but he’s tattered around the edges and grubby in places, and if you asked the bear he’d probably tell you he was ready for retirement.

“It was nobody,” I say.

“You called him Dad.”

“You must have misheard,” I say, and it’s a small lie but it hurts like a big one.

“You did. I heard you.”

“I’m sorry, baby, you’re right. I did say Dad.”

“Am I going to live with them?”

“What?”

“Daddy-Nat and Gramma,” she says, and she thinks that’s who I was talking to.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Mummy’s gone and I thought you might want a new family now.”

“Is that what somebody told you?” I say, immediately . . .

Make them suffer!

. . . angry at my in-laws for poisoning her mind like that. I keep my voice low and calm and friendly, a singsong voice, like when the cat sits at the door and I’m trying to convince him to come in.

“No, nobody told me. But on TV sometimes that’s what happens. Is that why Mummy left? Because she didn’t want to be with me anymore?”

“Of course not, baby,” I say, and I crouch down in front of her. “Mummy loves you very much, I know that—”

“You smell like the art teacher,” Sam says, interrupting me.

“Huh?”

“After lunch sometimes when we have art. He has the same aftershave.”

I smile. No more beer for Daddy. “Give Daddy a big hug, then eat some breakfast. I’m going to drop you off at Daddy-Nat’s and Grandma’s house for a bit. I have somebody I have to see, but I promise I won’t be long. I love you, sweetie.”

“I don’t want cereal,” she says.

“You can have what you want,” I tell her, which is a mistake, because thirty minutes later we’re sitting in a McDonald’s, the day heating up, and all I can think about is my father and what it is he wants to tell me.

chapter fourteen

The media called my dad “Jack the Hunter.” They played the angle up and seemed real excited about the symmetry it suggested. He was a modern-day Jack the Ripper with almost a perfect name for it, the best, in fact, unless of course in the late nineteenth century the real killer’s name was Jack Ripper.

Before he was caught, there was no name for him. There wasn’t really much of an interest. A prostitute would go missing and nobody would care. Another would go missing two or three or four years later and nobody searched for a connection. Then some of them showed up. Somebody somewhere figured out that prostitutes over a twenty-five-year period were dying in bad and similar ways. The media told the country about it, but they had no catchy title. They called him the “Prostitute Killer,” and the articles were small and easy to miss. Then came the arrest, then came the statistics, then came the connection to a name in history from the opposite side of the world and my dad became the worst kind of celebrity.

I’ve never visited my dad. We may share the same name and DNA but that’s all. I spent nine years of my life being Jack Jr. before going by my middle name. Sometimes when I was in trouble at home, Mum would call me Jack-son. She would save that name for when she wanted my dad to deal with me. I was his son and his responsibility, like when I failed a subject at school or cut the hair off my sister’s favorite doll. Belinda would call me Jacky in the times before our lives changed, and kept telling me I looked like a girl.

My last memory of Dad is that shy, humble smile of his, flashed at me from the back of a police car, his head twisted toward us, not a hint of shame in his features, almost a look of relief in some ways, as if he didn’t have to hide his true self anymore.

I’ve seen him a few times since, but only on TV and in the papers. Nobody has taken a photo of him in about eighteen years, not since he got snapped dozens of times being led from the back of a van to the back steps of the courthouse. Only reason I knew he was still alive was because nobody has ever rung to tell me otherwise.

I don’t know whether you have to phone ahead or simply show up, but once I drop Sam off I use my cell phone and call directory and ask for the number. A minute later I’m on the phone to the visitation department. I ask for directions and compare them to a map that’s about ten years out of date but does the job.

It’s a thirty-minute drive from my in-laws’ place. I take a shortcut out behind the airport where the roads are narrower but have a higher speed limit. There are cars parked up off the sides, the front windscreens facing the runways on the other side of the chain-link fences, people inside them watching for hours on end the planes come and go. I head down a highway enclosed by pastures, the road edged with fir trees and wildflowers. There are large transmission towers growing out of the fields and shrinking off into the distance. The road markings are all faded from the sun and worn from constant traffic. Mailboxes stand to attention every kilometer or so where gravel roads twist off from the highway between fields of gorse, winding their way toward large farmhouses built to capture the sun.

The prison is hidden out of sight beyond fields of trees, well away from homes that escapees would visit within minutes of being on the run. The complex is a mixture of several buildings, several wings, all made up of concrete blocks and interconnected with more concrete blocks, the whole place with an industrial feel, as if inside are not the condemned, but men welding steel and creating the machinery that runs this city. Just concrete and steel everywhere, and wire too—plenty of razor-sharp wire tying the look together. A couple of guard towers up in the corners, unarmed men up in them staring down, ready to sound the alarm at the first sign of trouble. Behind it all the tall skeletons of cranes at work, dust in the air kicked up by heavy equipment, engine noise from the bulldozers and cement mixers carrying for miles. There’s a long wing with scaffolding erected near the end and workmen busy on extending it, big burly men covered in grease and sweat who all possibly live within the walls they’re creating.

The visitors’ entrance is far more modern, like the entrance to a three-star hotel. There are large glass doors that seem as though they could be opening into a well-furnished foyer. The entire thing has the fresh look of renovations, and I wonder about the reasoning behind it. I’m not sure how it looked in the past, but the last few years have seen plenty of add-ons and updates to accommodate the new and the aspiring criminals this city is producing. Already some of the large open grounds out here have been zoned for more buildings, more cells, more inmates, and the grounds immediately nearby are already being converted. There have been editorials in the papers lately suggesting they build the concrete walls around Christchurch City and save some time; some even think we should take the biblical route and fill those walls up with water. I never believed them. I never knew Christchurch was really this bad—but now I know it’s worse.

There is a landscaped garden with a lush lawn heading toward the glass doors. I’m not sure what image they’re trying to sell here, but the whole thing seems very corporate. The doors open and it’s air-conditioned inside, which is a relief, because the parking lot with the asphalt has to be over forty degrees. A woman watches me from behind a reception counter with Plexiglas separating her from me. There are two men back there with her also. Three video surveillance cameras stare down at me from different angles within the room.

“Can I help you, sir?”

It’s like a bank in here, large potted plants, chairs everywhere, the counter with the smiling woman. If six armed men burst into this room I don’t think they’d get far. For the hundredth time today I wonder where those men are, and know they’re about as far away from this prison as you can get.

“Sir?”

The visitor’s entrance may be fresh and friendly, but the woman behind the desk is not. She’s in her forties with the kind of steely look that could scare half of the inmates straight. “Ah, yeah, I’m here to visit somebody.”

“Name?”

“Mine or his?”

“Both.”

“Ah, I’m Jack Hunter,” I say, hating the sound of the name, and saying it because that’s the name my dad will have given them. “My dad is . . .”

“Jack the Hunter,” she says, and she flinches away from me, just a little, but enough to notice. “Hang on a moment,” she says, and she buzzes for one of the guards. “Take a seat.” I do as she says in case she stands up and throws me into one.

It takes a couple of minutes for the guard to appear. He’s older than me and a lot bigger and looks as if he can’t wait for me to say the wrong thing.

“This way,” he says, and I follow him.

“No touching,” he says. “No yelling. No passing any objects. That’s pretty much all you got to know, but you break any of those rules and you’re out of here. You get me?”

“No touching, no yelling, no handing over anything. I get it,” and I wonder if the rules are the same for everybody.

The corporate image disappears. We head down a concrete hallway to a heavy metal door, passing an office on the way full of video monitors showing images from the prison. There are a few guards there, and one of them comes out and pats me down and passes a metal detector over me. It beeps a few times and I have to leave my keys and wallet in a tray. The original guard leads me toward another door. It’s buzzed open, and then we’re in another corridor. Another metal door. Another buzzing sound. The guard opens the door and takes a step back. “In there,” he says, and then he follows me inside.

I was expecting a row of phones with a thick piece of Plexiglas between them, covered in palm prints and scratches. Failing that, it’d be an interrogation room, my dad handcuffed and shackled to a chair. Instead it’s a large room with about a dozen tables. There are plenty of other prisoners in their orange jumpsuits talking to family members. One of them I recognize, a man very much like my father. I’ve seen him scattered over the pages of the papers, his face always on TV. He’s sitting opposite a woman and a man in their midsixties—perhaps his parents, because the woman is an older, female version of him. The man is the Christchurch Carver, and the media made the connection quicker with him and hyped him up as the city’s most infamous serial killer—even though he has maintained his innocence. The Carver looks up at me. He’s got a scar running down the side of his face and an eyelid that’s all twisted and doesn’t seem to fit right. He smiles and his broken eyelid droops.

A door at the opposite end of the room opens, and my dad comes through, a guard right behind him. For a second I’m back in time, watching his smile, then I’m further back, Dad throwing a ball with me, hugging me at night, putting a Band-Aid on my knee or removing a splinter, and back then Dad was the best dad in the world. When I was eight years old I even bought him a coffee mug that said the same thing. The mug lied. The memories lied too. He walks over toward me, but before he can reach out the guard following him reminds us of the no-touching rule—which is perfectly fine with me.

“Hello, son,” he says, and I wonder if he rehearsed what his first words would be to me. I don’t answer him. I don’t know how. “I can’t believe how much you’ve grown,” my dad says, and he sits down and I keep standing.

“You thought I’d still be a kid?” I ask.

“No. Not at all. Take a seat, Jack.”

“It’s Edward these days.”

“Not to me.”

The thing that strikes me the most is how much Dad has changed, but at the same time how much he is exactly the same. He has to be in his midsixties at least, though I’m not sure of his exact age. He could almost be seventy. He looks seventy, if that’s anything to go by. He was as large as life when I was kid—perhaps that’s because he was out there taking everybody else’s. He was a bigger man, certainly, but in jail the weight has slipped away from him, and my memories are old, and the combination of them means the man sitting ahead of me is not the man who raised me for the first third of my life. The time here has not only taken his weight, but also his hair. He’s bald on top with a ring of grey hair around the edges, and sideburns that don’t seem to match. He hasn’t stopped smiling since the moment he saw me, his lips peeled back, showing teeth that are slightly crooked that I don’t remember being crooked. His jaw is covered in stubble, his eyebrows longer now, hair sprouting from his ears and nose. But his eyes, his eyes are the same. Warm, friendly, smiling blue eyes that look at me with tenderness, and the wrinkles to the sides of them, the small wrinkles that appear when he smiles are the same, and Dad could be a hundred and ten years old and you’d still know him by his eyes. Is this me in the future? Is this the face I will one day have?

“It’s been a while,” I say, finally coming up with something. I sit down and the guard takes a few steps back and tries to pretend he isn’t listening to what we’re saying while Dad’s guard wanders off to the other side of the room.

“You got no argument from me,” Dad answers. “It’ll be twenty-one years next winter. That sure does count as a long time.”

Fact is, it’s the longest time anybody has served in this prison. Your run-of-the-mill murders get you ten to twelve years with parole. Less if you find Jesus. But Dad strung himself together a collection of ladies that was too long not to go answered for, so the wheels of justice ground in a new direction for him and he became the first person ever to be given “life” where “life” actually meant he’d never step outside of these walls again.

“I have a granddaughter,” he says. “Did you bring a picture?”

“No,” I answer, even though there is one in my wallet. I don’t want this man seeing her. I don’t want this man being part of her life, and by the time she ever has to learn of him he will hopefully be dead.

We stare at each other and I offer nothing else. I hardly know what to say. I always thought I would. I thought I’d scream at him, and suddenly I’m finding there’s something to be said about being with your dad again after all this time. Maybe I didn’t stop loving him at all way back then.

“I’m sorry how it turned out,” he says, and he spreads his hands magician style, as if he thinks his words carry more weight if he can prove he’s not hiding anything up his sleeves. “With your mum. And especially with Belinda. I loved that little girl. It almost killed me what happened to her.”

“You talk about her as if she was somebody you met,” I say. “She was your daughter. My sister. And you were out there taking away other parents’ little girls who were doing the same thing.”

“True,” he says. “Very true. But I still cry at night. I cry for the little girl I lost. I cry for the woman she never got to become.”

“You never got to see who she did become. She gave up everything for me. She did your job and she did Mum’s job and in the end it killed her. She’s dead because of you. Mum’s dead because of you.”

“I know.”

“You know? That’s it? When you cry, is it from remorse or from guilt?”

“Always from both,” he says. “Always.”

“I doubt that. I think you cry because you got caught. What do you want?”

“I wanted to see you. I’ve always wanted to know how you are. I try to keep track as much as I can, which isn’t much. If it hadn’t been for Jodie, I’d never even know you were . . .”

“What?”

“Married,” he finishes.

“What do you mean about Jodie?”

“She told me she’d never tell you, but she came to visit me. Twice.”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Dad. You start lying and I’m out of here.”

“It was eight years ago—the year before you got married. I think twenty-two is pretty young to get married, to be honest, but she didn’t come to see me about marriage advice.”

“And I don’t need marriage advice from you,” I say. Especially now, I think. “Why did she come to see you?” I ask, my stomach twisting into knots.

“The first time was to meet me. To see what I was like, maybe to see how life could have gone for you if you hadn’t met somebody like her to keep you happy.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Mum couldn’t make you happy? You make it sound like it was her fault you killed those people, that if she’d been a better wife then . . .”

“That’s not what I mean at all,” he says, holding up his hand to stop me.

“Then what?”

“It was a poor choice of words. Son, I never meant any of this to happen.”

“You didn’t? Thanks, Dad. That’s wonderful to hear. I wish I could repay you for those kind words. Maybe if you ever get out of here we can hang out together, maybe go bowling.”

“The second time,” he says, ignoring me, “she was pregnant.”

My stomach tightens. I hate the idea of her sitting out here, facing my father, exposing her deep-down fears, telling him she was scared that the things he did would run in the family. I hate the idea she exposed Sam to this kind of evil. I’m immediately angry at her for that. Angry at her for coming here, angry at her for dying.

“She was a real nice kid, and I didn’t hold it against her for hating me. I’m not kidding myself, I’ve got no friends in this world, and I’ve done nothing to deserve any, and anything she had to say to me I’d heard before.”

“What’s your point, Dad?”

“Dad. I like the way that sounds.”

“Enjoy it over the next two minutes. You’re never going to hear it again.”

“I want to meet my granddaughter.”

“Out of the question. Why did Jodie come to see you the second time?”

“I have a right to see her. She’s blood.”

“No. She’s nothing like you and she’s nothing to you. Why did Jodie come back?”

“She came to tell me you were a good man and I didn’t deserve to have you as a son. She told me I would be a grandfather and would never meet my grandchildren. She told me I had ruined a lot of lives, but yours wasn’t one of them. She said she was fixing the damage inside of you that I’d done. She wanted me to know you were a good man and were going to make a great father. That was her gift to me, Jack. You were one lucky man meeting her, and you did the right thing by getting a ring on her finger as early as you did.” He leans forward. “But you are different. You’re my son, and she sensed it in you.”