Chương 11
“You don’t have to read everything,” Chloe told him.
“There are nine kinds of eggs.”
“They’re all eggs.”
“That is not what the menu claims.”
He ordered coffee and toast.
When the coffee arrived, he held the mug with both hands. Prison coffee had come lukewarm in plastic. The ceramic felt heavy and breakable.
Elena opened a folder.
“The first month, visits will be supervised.”
“I’m her father.”
“You’re also a man she has known mostly through letters and prison rooms.”
“I didn’t leave her.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“She wants to live with me.”
Chloe was coloring on the children’s menu. Her crayon stopped.
Elena lowered her voice. “She wants you not to disappear. That is not exactly the same thing.”
Gavin looked toward the window.
Traffic moved through the intersection. A woman in a red coat waited too long to cross, then stepped back when the signal changed.
“What am I supposed to prove?” he asked.
“That you can build a life with her instead of making her responsible for yours.”
The words landed harder because Elena did not say them cruelly.
Gavin stirred coffee he had not sweetened.
“I don’t know how.”
“I believe you.”
“That wasn’t reassurance.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Chloe pushed the menu toward him.
She had drawn three figures beside a square house. One figure had long yellow hair. Another wore beige. The third had a blue shirt stretched too tightly across his chest.
“You made Elena taller than me,” Gavin said.
“She is taller.”
“Not emotionally.”
Elena gave him a flat look.
Chloe laughed hard enough to drop the green crayon.
The first supervised visits took place in a family-services office with washable furniture and a cabinet of toys meant for children younger than Chloe. Gavin tried too hard.
He brought books she had outgrown. He asked too many questions about school. He apologized whenever silence lasted more than a few seconds.
During the third visit, Chloe closed the board game they were playing.
“You don’t have to talk all the time.”
“I’m making up for lost conversation.”
“You can’t.”
The answer stung.
Gavin looked down at the game pieces.
“No,” he said. “I guess I can’t.”
Chloe picked at a frayed corner of the board.
“Mom used to do that too.”
“Talk too much?”
“After she got sick. She asked if I was okay every five minutes.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“Yes.”
They sat quietly.
A lawn crew worked outside the office. The mower’s engine rose and faded beyond the window.
Chloe moved one game piece without checking the rules.
“Was Mom bad?” she asked.
Gavin’s chest tightened.
“No.”
“She made me keep the phone secret.”
“That was a bad decision.”
“But was she bad?”
“No.”
“Were you bad?”
He could have offered distinctions between crimes and character, between weakness and cruelty, between what he had done and what the state had falsely said he had done.
Instead he said, “Sometimes.”
Chloe nodded as if the answer fit something she had already observed.
“Am I?”
“Sometimes.”
She looked offended. “When?”
“You cheated just now.”
“I moved one square.”
“You moved three.”
“The rules are too slow.”
“That sounds like something a criminal would say.”
She narrowed her eyes, then laughed despite herself.
Gavin smiled, but the question stayed with him.
Lila had not been bad. She had been frightened, sick and desperate to protect her family from a man she believed watched every exit. She had also placed an impossible duty on Chloe. Both truths occupied the same room.
Gavin began therapy twice a week.
At first he disliked the therapist because she allowed silences to continue after he had answered. Prison silences had rules. A pause meant danger, privacy or refusal. In the therapist’s office, silence meant she expected him to remain present.
He learned that he slept better with a chair wedged beneath the doorknob.
He learned that grocery stores made him dizzy.
He learned that the sound of keys behind him caused his shoulders to rise before he could stop them.
He learned that freedom contained too many doors.
He took a maintenance job at a church-owned apartment complex after three employers withdrew offers when online searches revealed both the overturned murder conviction and his fraud plea.
The manager, a woman named Patrice, told him she did not believe in second chances.
“I believe in references and showing up,” she said. “You have one reference and you’re twenty minutes early. We’ll start there.”
Gavin repaired loose cabinet hinges, replaced smoke detectors and unclogged drains. He was forbidden from handling tenant payments or vendor contracts.
The restriction embarrassed him.
It also relieved him.
He rented a one-bedroom apartment across town from Chloe’s foster placement. The bedroom became hers. Gavin slept on a foldout couch in the living room.
For the first overnight visit, Chloe brought two bags, a pillow and the blue music box.
The state had returned it after copying and preserving the phone. One screw from the hidden compartment was missing. The enamel had chipped near the hinge.
Gavin placed it on the kitchen table.
“Does it still play?” he asked.
“Not right.”
He opened the lid.
The dancer was gone. The empty spindle turned with a dry metallic scrape. When he wound the mechanism, the melody started slowly, sped up and stopped after four notes.
“I can fix it,” he said.
“Mom tried.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“She said the spring was broken.”
“I have springs.”
“You have sink springs.”
“I have access to the full world of maintenance-related springs.”
Chloe did not look convinced.
That night she refused the bedroom and slept on the couch.
Gavin took the floor.
At 2:16 in the morning, he woke to find her standing over him.
“What happened?”
“You were making a noise.”
“What noise?”
“Like you couldn’t breathe.”
He sat up. His shirt clung to his back.
“Bad dream.”
“About prison?”
“Yes.”
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“Were they going to kill you?”
He rubbed his face.
