Sinful Longing

*

When Colin woke up at dawn, the sun streaming through the open window in his house, he didn’t embark on his usual Saturday morning routine. The mountains called to him, but he ignored them. The lake wanted his company, but it would survive without him today. No gym, no workout, and no quiet contemplation.

There was one thing he had to do, so he lobbed a call to his youngest sibling and suggested a road trip.

Marcus was game. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

Colin suspected this was why Marcus had wanted to get to know his siblings. Not necessarily for a trip like this, but to be invited. To be included.

Two hours and one hundred miles later, they were drinking Slushees and arguing over whether rock music was better than hip-hop. Marcus kept trying to take control of the radio, tuning in to stations Colin didn’t want to listen to. Colin gave Marcus a hard time because that was in the how-to-be-a-brother handbook, and the hazing made the kid laugh.

At the next gas station, they added Doritos to the haul. Colin ripped open the bag. “I think this might make my system go into shock. It’s the first true junk food I’ve had in ages.”

Marcus scoffed. “Dude. You drink soda all the time. Your body’s not a temple twenty-four-seven.”

“Touché. I just can’t give up the hard stuff, I guess. Me and Diet Coke—we’re like this,” he said, twisting his index and middle finger together. “Diet Coke has gotten me through many moments of temptation.”

“Then you need to keep worshiping the almighty beverage,” he said.

They returned to his car and plowed through Doritos, Peanut M&Ms, and more Diet Coke as they drove.

By one p.m., they pulled into the lot at Hawthorne. Colin froze momentarily at the gate as he showed his ID. It was as if all his systems simply stopped functioning for a few seconds. Not because he was nervous. Not because he was scared.

He didn’t feel either of those emotions.

Instead, astonishment gripped him.

He was amazed that the woman who had given birth to him had lived eighteen years behind this fence, past that barbed wire, beyond the concrete walls.

Ryan had told him that today was a visiting day, but Dora Prince wasn’t expecting them. Colin wasn’t here for her, though, or for the investigation. He didn’t come to question her, or obtain evidence. He had nothing to ask her. That wasn’t his job. That wasn’t his role.

He was here for the healing.

As much as he’d tried to dismiss Elle’s suggestion, it had hovered at the front of his brain for the last week. To keep moving forward in his life, whether with Elle or without her, he had another step to take.

Recovery was a daily practice. It didn’t end. He would always be unfinished, but this was part of coming to peace with his unfinished self.

Before they entered the visiting room he turned to Marcus and said, “Bet you didn’t think you’d be here with me visiting our mom today, did you?”

Marcus shook his head. “Nope. But is it weird to say I’m glad we’re here?”

Colin managed a small smile. “It’s not. Let’s go see her.”

“Let’s do it,” Marcus echoed as they entered the cold, concrete visiting room.

A minute later, a woman in orange walked through the door, a corrections officer at her side.

Colin felt nothing and he felt everything.

She was the woman who’d raised him for thirteen years, and she was the woman he’d hated for eighteen years. She was the murderer and the mother. She was everything he never wanted to be, and then he’d become like her in ways he never wanted.

She was a prisoner, and she was a human being. One who still felt emotions, because oceans poured from her eyes, and they were tears of joy, as if all she’d ever wanted was to see her kids.

Despite all his efforts to remain stoic, a lump rose in his throat.

“My babies,” she said, crossing the distance in a nanosecond and wrapping her two youngest kids in the strangest hug Colin had ever experienced. That was no small feat for her to hug two men, considering both towered over her tiny frame. “My babies, my babies, my babies,” she sobbed.

She couldn’t stop weeping, or saying their names.

Eventually, the corrections officer made her let go. The front of Colin’s shirt was wet from her tears.

“Colin,” she said with a crazed kind of joy as she looked at him. Then, she shifted her gaze. “Marcus.”

“Hi,” Marcus said, and his voice seemed horribly dry as he added, “Mom.”

Colin couldn’t bring himself to call her that. But he had something else to say to her. He clapped Marcus on the shoulder and met his mother’s eyes.