Dad blinks open his eyes, they’re glassy from being sick. His gaze rakes down me, searching for the cause of my distress. “You look like shit.”
I force myself to offer him a smile that I don’t feel. My heart splintered into a million pieces before I set foot in this room. I called everything with Brennon a mistake.
“You don’t look so hot yourself,” I counter. He hasn’t let me visit him since he was arrested eight weeks ago. I understand that he didn’t want me to see him in his inmate uniform, but it still hurt. It hurts even worse to know he’s been so sick.
“Just a touch of cold,” he mutters before breaking into a coughing fit. I grab the nearby pink pitcher and pour him water. I help him sip from the cup before he says, “It takes more than this to keep your old man down.”
“I know,” I whisper, my eyes filling with tears.
“Don’t do this, sweet pea. Tell me something good, something that makes you smile,” Dad says. It’s what he always said to me when I was a kid, and I was having a bad day. It usually helped to turn things around. But I’m not a kid anymore and life isn’t that simple. Now, it’s complicated. Really complicated thanks to a certain mountain man.
“They finally opened up that sushi restaurant near my apartment,” I tell him. It opened a few days ago. I wasn’t there for the grand opening since I was busy getting married, but he doesn’t need to know that part.
I move to the purple recliner next to his bed. I keep my movements slow in case that officer nearby suddenly decides to take an interest in me. But he’s still focused on the TV. I sit, my muscles aching from all the things I did together with Brennon. I can’t think about him right now, so instead I tell my dad, “I’ll take you there when we get out.”
I pass the next hour by making promises to my father. All the things we’ll do and the places we’ll go. The adventures we’ll have. By the time, he finally drifts into a light slumber, he has a smile on his face.
My phone dings from my purse, but I quickly turn it off. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. I just want to wake up from this terrible nightmare. I want to go back to that shitty apartment when I was a waitress, and my dad was a janitor. Back then, I found twenty dollars at the laundromat and bought us all the seafood we could eat from that little restaurant down at the pier. Life was simpler back then.
Visiting hours are officially over, but the officer across the room is snoring loudly. Over the course of my conversation with my dad, I learned the man’s name is Oliver. Apparently, he and my dad are friends. Well, I guess as much friends as two people can be in this situation.
I lean back in my chair keeping watch over my father until my eyes are dry and gritty. How many nights did he do this when we were homeless? How many times did he stay awake, silently standing guard so I would be safe through the night?
The sun is just starting to lighten the sky with shades of pink and orange when a nurse comes bustling into the room to take my father’s vitals. She does her job, quickly and efficiently. She leaves with promises the doctor will be in soon just as the breakfast tray arrives.
He waves away the food and asks the officer to turn up the news channel. His favorite segment, the one on local businesses, will be on soon. My dad might love inventing new things, but he’s also fascinated by business topics. He’s a hell of an entrepreneur. He always has been. When this is done, I’m going to help him rebuild. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out.
While he’s busy with that, a second officer comes into the room. He has a hushed conversation with Oliver, and I assume they’re changing shifts. But then Oliver approaches the bed and reaches for the cuffs. He unlocks them, careful not to hurt my father. “Walt, they’re saying charges against you are being dropped.”
“What?” My father and I both stare at Oliver, trying to compute this information.
“As of six this morning, you’re a free man,” Oliver claps him gently on the shoulder with a smile. “I don’t know who you know, but somebody has pull. I heard the governor called the warden on his personal line in the middle of the night.”
I gasp. There’s only one family with that much power. Did Jack finally make good on his word? Did he release my father without knowing what I said to Brennon about the divorce?