I barely pay attention to what she says after she informed me of his official transfer date, and when she rattles off visitation days and hours, at least I snap to it long enough to scribble those down on the sales ledger next to the phone that’s open to a blank page. When she asks me if I need anything else, I don’t bother answering her; I just hang up the phone.
“I’m guessing by what I heard you found the right prison. Did he die or something? Is that why you look like you’re in shock?” Nolan asks, pulling the ledger across the counter toward him to see what I wrote down.
“He’s still alive and yes, he’s there. Tobias wasn’t transferred nine months before I was born like I thought,” I mumble, going through the woman’s words in my head again, realizing I was right all along with my suspicions, and I feel even more sure of them now than I was five minutes ago.
“Okay, so what does that mean? You don’t think he’s your father now? It was all just suspicion anyway so it’s not like we had any concrete proof,” he reminds me, pushing the ledger back where it was.
“I think we have even better proof now,” I inform him, ripping the page out of the ledger with the visitation times. “He wasn’t transferred in 1946, but an immediate and emergency transfer was called in to Strongfield on the same day I was born. That seems a little bit strange to me. How about you?”
Nolan runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head back and forth slowly. “Yeah, that’s a little too coincidental even for me. I’m assuming you’d like to go on a little road trip, since Strongfield is only an hour away, and if the times on the paper in your hand are visiting hours, that means we still have five hours left today.”
Turning away from the counter, I grab the spare set of my father’s car keys from the hook hanging on the wall. Thankfully, I don’t need to wait for another random bit of luck that my father will emerge from his office, allowing me the opportunity to steal his car keys that are always kept in his desk—or be forced to have Nolan pick the lock and try to come up with a lie about why I need the keys.
Feeling an abnormal burst of happiness and, strangely, not at all uncomfortable with it, I decide to try my hand at being just a little bit nice, tossing the keys to Nolan and informing him that he can drive. It’s the only bit of control I feel comfortable conceding to right now.
When we walk out the front door, I make sure the “Closed Indefinitely” sign is still hanging right in the middle of it. I put it there the first day my father locked himself away and refused to deal with anything, including the running of this prison. After one hour of dealing with annoying, nosy tourists, I wrote the words in big, bold letters and taped the sign prominently to the door. I’m not sure what will happen if the state finds out how long my father has been ignoring the business, since this is a historical building and they fund everything, as well as give us a place to live free of charge. Frankly, I don’t really care.
After I woke up from my accident, every morning my mother would braid my hair, and repeatedly tell me all the facts about the girl I supposedly was, but there was only one I liked to hear: I had a full scholarship waiting for me at a very nice college a few hours away, and that scholarship included room and board, as well as all of my meals. Even if I never figure everything out or regain all of my memories, at least I’ll be able to get the hell away from this place that seems to be the root of everything that has gone wrong in my life, leave my father far behind, and never look back ever again.
Nolan opens the passenger door of my father’s car like the perfect gentleman he is, closing it when he’s sure I’m all the way inside. I watch as he walks around the front of the vehicle and I whisper my mantra that is constantly evolving.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I’m going to meet my real father.”
Chapter 18
I tried to spend the hour-long car ride to Strongfield State Penitentiary in silence, so I could plan what I would say to Tobias Duskin, but Nolan wanted to talk, as usual. Since I couldn’t force him to shut up by grabbing the steering wheel and swerving us into a tree without injuring myself as well, I gave up my desire for quiet time so we could go over the list of things I knew versus things that were still questionable.
“Okay, the first thing that felt off to you was the way you wore your hair and the clothes in your closet, both of which your mother insisted were your style and your daily uniform, correct?” Nolan asks as I look out the window watching the scenery fly by.
“Correct,” I reply. “Both of those things felt completely wrong the very first day I woke up after the accident.”
Nolan nods, flipping on the wipers when a few drops of rain splatter against the windshield. “You felt better when you took a pair of scissors to your clothes and let down your hair, and we found an entire suitcase of clothes that you somehow knew were yours.”
“Yes,” I quickly answer, turning my head to look at his profile. “But even though I feel more like myself now, you confirmed what my mother told me about my clothes and hair—that the entire two years you worked at the prison, excluding the few days leading up to my night in the woods, I did in fact always wear those ugly dresses with tightly braided hair. So that’s still a little weird.”
Nolan shrugs as he concentrates on the road in front of us when the rain picks up. “Still, you had dreams and a few flashes of memory about you looking different and about the suitcase of clothes. So for right now, we’re going to put that in the positive column and consider it a memory successfully retrieved.”
We continued going back and forth, having plenty of time to rehash everything. The drive took longer than expected due to the summer shower turning into a downpour, making it harder to see while driving.
In the memories retrieved column I have:
– Feeling uncomfortable with my father’s affection, almost as if he’d never shown me any before. That affection quickly turned into his avoidance and then downright hostility toward me. I might not have confirmed with one-hundred-percent certainty that the cause for all of this is that he’s not my father, but it’s going into the positive column for now.
– The feelings of hatred toward Trudy, my supposed best friend, as well as memories of the two of us fighting, and the suspicious scratches on her neck that I knew she was lying about. This was confirmed as something real and part of my missing memories when I finally remembered our entire fight and confronted her about it. Being stuck in a small, confined space and forced to talk to Nolan this entire trip suddenly became enjoyable when I got to stare at his profile as I relived all of this for him. I got to witness his face turn a bright shade of red, followed by repeated apologies, and pathetic begging, ending with pitiful assurances that Trudy kissed him, not the other way around, and he made it clear to her that he didn’t like her that way.
– Nolan not liking me very much, as well as my feeling uneasy around him, was finally figured out when I remembered he was with me in the woods, that he was the one who found me and took me home, then proceeded to lie about it. I decide to keep him in the dark about how none of this has fixed my anxiety around him—his affection is foreign to me—and that I calm my feelings of discomfort by imagining cutting off his limbs. I mean, he’s nice and he’s helping me, so that seems like a conversation better left for never.
At this point, the only things in the negative column that I still can’t remember fully or explain at all would be the horrible memories and dreams about pain and misery, all surrounding Dr. Thomas, and, of course, what forced me that night to run away from the prison and out into the woods. Nolan is adamant that anything his mother said during our short visit should go in this column as well, since the medication she’s on confuses her mind, but I’m still secretly placing her mention of the letter T somewhere in between the two lists. There has to be a reason I felt it was important and that she knew a truth about me I couldn’t quite figure out. I wanted her to stop talking because her words made my skin crawl and that’s not
something I can easily push aside. The things I’m most uncomfortable with seem to keep turning into true facts about my life.
As soon as we finish with our list, Nolan is turning on his blinker and pulling into the parking lot of Strongfield.
“A lot different from Gallow’s Hill, isn’t it?” he asks as he finds a parking space in the visitor’s lot and turns off the engine.
I don’t answer him as I lean closer to the dash to stare at the building in front of us. It’s obviously quite different than Gallow’s Hill since it was built in the early 1940’s as opposed to the 1800’s. It’s more modern and simple—just one long, single-story building surrounded by a chain-link fence.
“This place was built specifically for overflow when Gallow’s Hill became too crowded,” I tell him. “Then when we closed, the majority of our prisoners were relocated here. With all of the new prisoners’ rights laws enacted since Gallow’s Hill closed, they definitely have better accommodations and less risk of guards feeling like they could treat them however they wished.”
Nolan and I exit the car, and he slides his hand into mine as we take off running through the rain, soon making it to the covered sidewalk that leads to the visitor’s entrance on the side of the building. My palms are sweating, and I can’t stop the slight tremor that travels through my arms as we shake the rain from our hair and clothing. Nolan pulls the hand he’s holding up to his chest, pressing it against his heart.
“Don’t be nervous. I’ll be right there next to you,” he assures me.
I keep my mouth shut as he opens the door, drops my hand, and gestures for me to go inside ahead of him. I’m not nervous about seeing Tobias because I know it will provide answers to my questions. His handholding and overall niceness is what make me nervous and want to run away screaming.
Nolan tries to take my hand again, but I yank it away, moving farther ahead of him and straight to the check-in counter, where a grandmotherly woman sits with a notebook and pen in front of her.
She turns the notebook around, pushing it across the counter toward me with a smile on her face. “Just print your name and the name of the prisoner you’ll be visiting today.”
Grabbing the pen from the top of the book, I neatly print my information at the bottom of the other list of sign-ins. When I’m finished, she turns the book around, glances quickly at what I wrote and begins to get up from her chair. She pauses halfway out of her seat, her head whipping back down to the book. She lifts it from the counter and pulls it closer to her face, her eyes widening as she looks back and forth between me and the book.
“Tobias Duskin? You’re here to visit Tobias Duskin?” she asks in a quiet, shocked voice.
“Yes, is that a problem?”
I start to worry that maybe we made the trip out here for no reason. Maybe he’s not allowed to have visitors. Considering the extent of his crimes, I probably should have thought about that before jumping into the car and racing over here, but the only thing on my mind was getting answers that only he could provide.
“No, no problem,” she replies, the smile again on her face as she places the book back on top of the counter. “Just a little surprising is all. I’ve worked here since before Mr. Duskin was transferred here and in all that time I believe he’s only had one other visitor.”
Nolan and I share a look, and he jumps into the conversation.
“You wouldn’t by chance remember who his visitor was, would you, ma’am?” he asks politely.
“Oh, heavens no!” she replies with a chuckle. “It was so long ago that the log books for that time have already been sent down to storage, otherwise I’d look it up for you. The only reason I remember is because we keep reports on which inmates receive the largest or the least number of personal visits, and every month for eighteen years, Mr. Duskin is always at the bottom of the list with just that one visitor in all this time.”
She moves away from the counter, busying herself with getting our visitor badges in between answering the phone when it rings. After a few minutes, she hands us the badges and quickly runs down the list of rules we’ll need to follow when they call us, such as remaining only in the designated visiting area, no talk of the prisoner’s treatment or questions about his daily habits in the facility, no conversations that will anger or upset the prisoner in any way, and when our thirty minutes are up, we must end our visit immediately without any trouble or we will never be permitted back.
I’m sure we’ll have no trouble following the rules, but even if we can’t, it’s not like I plan on coming back here to visit Tobias again anyway.
Nolan and I pin the visitor badges to our clothing and then take a seat in the hard plastic chairs pushed against the wall until our names are called.
“Do you know what you’re going to say to him?” Nolan asks softly as we watch a few more people enter the building and go up to the counter to check in.
“I guess I’ll just get right to the point and ask him if he knows he’s my father,” I reply. “That’s the only question I care about getting an answer to right now.”
If I had more than thirty minutes with him and if Nolan wasn’t here with me, I might ask him why he killed his parents and a handful of strangers. I’d ask him if he thought about it beforehand, dreamed about it, craved it, and it just became too much, and he had to do it before the thoughts in his head drove him crazy. Basically, I’d ask him if that was something I had to look forward to, since we share the same bloodline.
“Visitors for Duskin?”
Nolan and I stand up from the chairs when a guard holding a clipboard announces our name. We follow him through a door leading away from the waiting area and down a long hallway, stopping in another small room. We’re asked to remove any items we might have in our pockets so they can be inspected. Nolan removes his wallet and keys, placing them on the table, and we wait while another guard quickly checks them over, passing Nolan’s wallet back to him and informing him he can pick up his keys after the visit.
Moving out of the room, we continue on down the hallway, coming to a closed door. The guard unlocks it and then holds it open for us. In the middle of the stark white room is a long wooden counter that runs from wall to wall. There are booths separated by wooden walls attached to the counter, two metal chairs inside each booth and a glass partition running right down the middle.
“Duskin will be in booth number eight, right down there,” the guard tells us, pointing to the booth at the very end that has a sign taped to the inside wall with the number eight written on it. “When he is escorted to the booth, you can pick up the phone on your side of the counter to communicate, and he’ll do the same on his side. You will have exactly thirty minutes from the time he sits down.”
Without another word, he turns and exits the room. I walk slowly toward booth eight, glancing at the booths we pass, all currently occupied by other people visiting prisoners, the low hum of conversation filling the room. Nolan pulls out a chair for me and I take a seat, clasping my hands together in front of me on the counter, staring at the empty chair on the other side of the glass.
Nolan wisely keeps his mouth shut while we wait, and I tap my foot against the floor under the counter in nervous excitement that I can’t even explain. I’m here to confirm whether or not my parents lied to me my entire life about who my father really is, and excitement probably isn’t the most appropriate feeling to have right now, but I can’t help it. What little I know about Tobias Duskin already fascinates me, and I’m anxious to find out more.
A door on the other side of the partition suddenly opens, and my eyes greedily take in the man in shackles being led to his chair across from me.
“Oh my God,” Nolan whispers as the guard helps Tobias sit down in his chair, saying a few words to him that we can’t hear because of the glass and then exiting back through the door, leaving us alone for our visit.
Oh my God is right. Looking at this man across from me is like looking at a more hardened version of my father. They look so much
alike they could pass for twins. I watch in silence as he stares right at me, our eyes the exact same shade of green. My mother has the same color eyes as I do, so it’s not really proof he’s my father, but something in his eyes calls to me. I can’t look away, and the glass that separates us angers me. I want to reach across the counter and touch him, grab ahold of the energy and excitement that radiates out of his stare and pull it inside of me.
I slowly lift the phone receiver and hold it against my ear, waiting for him to do the same. His eyes never leave my face and a few seconds later, he reaches for the handle of his own phone, the shackles on his wrists making him use both hands to bring it up to his ear.
Static crackles through the line for a moment, and then I hear his smooth, deep voice.
“Hello there, darlin’.”
The corner of his mouth tips up in a half-smile, and my heart thumps loudly in my chest. His voice fills me with needs and wants and a feeling of power that I can’t even explain.
“You know who I am?” I ask softly.
He chuckles, the sound warming my skin in the damp, chilly room.
“You look just like your mother, so it’s not hard to guess who you are,” he replies.
“But do I look like you as well?” I ask, holding my breath, waiting for him to confirm my suspicions.
“Could be, but you’d have to ask her that.”
“She’s dead, so that’s not really an option,” I reply.
“Let me guess: Tanner finally bored her to death?” he asks, laughing at his own joke. “My brother wouldn’t know how to have a good time if it jumped up and bit him on the ass.”
I stay quiet, waiting for him to keep talking. At this point, I don’t even care what he says; I just want to hear his voice.
“And here I thought he kicked me out of Gallow’s just because he couldn’t handle knowing his wife preferred the company of a killer over him,” he continues. “He didn’t just need to protect Claudia from my wicked ways: he needed to protect her bouncing baby girl too.”