I nod slowly, taking it all the way in. “All right, then. So now we know. Let’s go see Mom and Annie.”
“Wait.” Quentin grips my wrist with surprising strength. “You don’t want to hear this, but I’ve got to say it. Right this minute, your father’s sitting in a cell exactly like the one you just left. And he’s in a lot worse shape than you, physically speaking. He wants to see you, Penn. He wants to talk to you.”
The ice in my chest has begun climbing up my throat. “After a week of running from me? Quentin, I told you—”
“I’m not asking you for Tom’s sake! I’m asking for Peggy’s. If your mother asks you to go across the river with her, you need to go.”
“Quentin, I’m not—”
“I ain’t flappin’ my gums to hear myself talk, boy!”
His shout stuns me into silence. A shocked face appears in the window to my left. I signal that we’re okay.
“You know what’s going on here?” Quentin asks. “You’re like the angry parent who thinks the best thing for a wayward child is to spend a night in jail. But this is your father, Penn. He probably won’t even live until his trial date. He might not live to see next Sunday, if he doesn’t get something to hope for soon. And Sunday is tomorrow, in case you forgot.”
I look down at the floor, Caitlin’s last message playing in my head. You have to forgive your father, she said.
“What can Dad want from me but absolution, Quentin? And I’m not empowered to give him that. That’s up to Mom.”
Quentin drops his hand from my wrist. “Penn, you’ve got a lot of growing up to do yet. Your mother forgave that man the day she married him. You’ve got to swallow your pride and face the world as it is. You just lost the woman you loved, and you feel like you’ve lost your father, too. You’ve also got a brother you never knew about. A soul brother, as it happens. That’s not the end of the world, but you want to blame all that on somebody. Well, that’s natural. But there’s plenty of blame to go around. You’ve got to be a man now.”
“I’m forty-five years old, Quentin.”
The old man shakes his head sadly. “Age got nothing to do with it. I know eighty-year-old men still obsessed with the slights of their youth. They wouldn’t know forgiveness if they stepped in it. You’ve got to open your heart to let the pain out. Ask any nurse, she’ll tell you. Doesn’t matter what you’re talking about. Better out than in.”
I haven’t the energy to resist Quentin’s gift for persuasion. “You know, sometimes I really do believe you spent time in jail with Martin Luther King.”
“Hell, that’s established fact. Now— Hang on.” He takes his cell phone from his coat pocket and checks it. “Doris just sent me a text message. The reporters out on the steps just left. Must have gone to get something to eat. Let’s get out while the gettin’s good.”
His whirring chair leads me to the wide swinging door monitored by a video camera. When the door buzzes open, Quentin rolls through the door like an aged black knight on a charger, ready to do battle with anyone who would obstruct us. Beyond him I see a motley crowd lining the seats against the walls, wearing clothes that look like they were snatched out of a Goodwill bin and worn directly to the jail. Half the people in the crowd are talking on cell phones, while several toddlers bound through the lobby as if playing in their own backyards.
In the midst of this chaotic scene my mother stands like a duchess at the center of a Renaissance painting. With her perfectly coiffed silver hair and sky-blue pantsuit, she clutches a purse under one arm and holds my daughter’s hands in hers. Walt Garrity stands beside them like a tired cowboy who mistakenly wandered into the painting and can’t find his way out.
Annie sees me first, and her eyes light up like diamonds in the beam of a spotlight. With no regard for the propriety so important to my mother, she shouts “Daddy!” then jerks her arm free, sprints toward me, and leaps into my arms. This barely elicits glances from the veteran visitors, but my mother raises her chin to get a better look at me. After convincing herself that I am indeed her son, she sags against Walt as though her storied strength has finally given out. Walt hooks a comforting arm around her, then raises his other hand and gives me a thumbs-up and a wide grin.
CHAPTER 93
DURING OUR WALK from the jail lobby to the courtyard outside the sheriff’s department, Quentin must have communicated to my mother that I now know the results of the DNA test. Otherwise, she would have already asked me to ride over to Vidalia with her and visit my father. She hasn’t, and after a few awkward moments, I realize she doesn’t intend to. She will cross the river with Walt as an escort and only asks that I take care of Annie while she’s “busy.”
Quentin straightens in his wheelchair to accept a bent-over hug from my mother, then follows Doris to their Mercedes van. Backing his wheelchair onto the mechanical lift, he watches me while it raises him into the van’s belly. His reproving eyes tell me he expected more compassion from me than this. My last image of him is of a proud man looking determinedly forward as his younger wife and de facto nurse drives him away from a block where he’ll be spending a great many hours during the next six months.
We four who remain exchange hugs, but as we separate, John Kaiser walks briskly through the main lobby doors, scans the sidewalk, then turns directly toward me. I can see from his face that something has changed, and not for the better. At this point, having tasted freedom, my greatest fear is that Billy Byrd has decided to keep me in jail until a judge orders him to release me. Giving Annie’s shoulder a squeeze, I meet Kaiser at the foot of the steps leading down to the sidewalk. Up close, I see his face is deathly pale.
“What’s happened, John? Don’t tell me I’m going back inside.”
“I wish that was it,” he says.
Now I’m truly afraid. “Don’t tell me my father died.”