Chapter Seventeen The Memory

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE MEMORY

The following day I called in sick to work and took a bus to visit my father at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill. I didn’t tell my mother – she had been stressed out ever since the incident at Millie’s party, and I figured my father’s incarceration was the last thing I should bring up. Besides, I was going there for answers to a problem she seemed to have no knowledge of and, if it was as bad as I was anticipating, I wanted to keep it that way.

The Correctional Center encompassed several concrete cell blocks and one roundhouse building fenced in by a perimeter with ten walled watchtowers. Beyond the walls, over two thousand acres of barren landscape surrounded the prison, keeping it far removed from anything that might have once resembled normal life for its nearly four thousand inmates, one of whom was my father.

It was the sixth time I had seen him since he had gone to prison almost eighteen months ago, and each time was harder than the one before. I tried not to dwell on the fact that I still had four more years of these visits ahead of me.

After presenting my identification and passing through the security check, I met my father in the visiting room. Around us, other prisoners sat on metal stools at white tables with their families; kids as young as one and two mingled with grannies and gothic teenagers. Prison guards lingered by the walls, eyes narrowed in pursuit of a forbidden embrace or any other illicit exchange, above or below the tables.

My father was paler than I expected and there were new dark creases under his eyes. I knew it could have been a lot worse. Since my father wasn’t gang-affiliated, he was technically, in prison parlance, a ‘neutron’, which meant the violent inmates mostly left him alone. He could not, however, avoid the effects of meagre food and limited physical exercise. He was losing weight and losing sleep.

‘How are you?’ I began to chew on my pinkie nail – a nervous habit that usually returned in his company.

My father shook out his scruffy grey hair so it fell across his forehead and hid the faint bruises above his eye – they only mostly left him alone. ‘Getting by, Soph.’ He tried to smile, but it was crooked and yellowed. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

It took everything in me not to crumple in my cold metal seat. How did my father end up in this place? He was a shadow of the man who had raised me on sweeping fairy tales, swash-buckling adventure movies and faraway hiking trips. The worst things he ever did were yell at me when he lost his temper, forget to wash the dishes, or stay out too late with Uncle Jack every once in a while. He didn’t belong in here with murderers. Even if he had killed a man.

‘Dad, you don’t look so good.’

‘We don’t get lots of fruit and vegetables in here,’ he teased, but the joviality didn’t reach his eyes. He leant forward and took my hand in his; I could feel his rough, calloused skin against mine. ‘Happy belated birthday, Soph.’

‘No contact across the tables!’ shouted a nearby prison guard. I resisted the urge to slam my head against the table as we pulled our hands apart. I kept my gaze on my fingernails instead. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘So how is everything at home?’ His eyes lit up with interest, brightening his face and pulling my attention away from the new lines that had formed around his mouth.

‘Boring, as usual,’ I lied, purposefully omitting the part about me being drugged at Millie’s house party. I knew he would hear it from Jack or my mother soon, but it wasn’t going to be from me.

‘I started a new book yesterday…’ he began.

I listened as he told me all about the books he had been reading. When he finished, I traded some of my own safe topics, including how my mother had gained some new clients in Lincoln Park and Millie’s recently formed, hare-brained intention to go Greek-island-hopping after high school. We spoke about Mrs Bailey’s weekly visits and touched briefly on my fast-approaching senior year. My father smiled and contributed at all the right times until the conversation drew to a natural close. As much as I wanted to pursue less threatening topics, I knew I had to prioritize my true intentions, because the visit would soon come to an end. As it was, I hadn’t even scratched the surface of the real reason I had come to see him.

‘Dad,’ I interjected before he could launch into another ambling conversation. ‘I have a question.’

He perked up in his chair and regarded me seriously. I loved that about him – he had always treated me like an adult worthy of respect, even when I was a small child. I knew that meant he would answer me as best he could. ‘What is it, Soph?’

I decided to dive straight in. ‘Remember I told you how a new family moved into the old Priestly place? There are five of them and they’re all boys.’

His eyelids fluttered, but he kept his mouth closed in a hard line, waiting for me to finish.

‘Well, I think you might know them.’

‘Have you spoken to this family?’ he asked, rubbing the stubble on his chin. ‘Have they approached you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve spoken to them.’

My father buried his face in his hands and released a heavy sigh. ‘Jesus,’ he said, half muffled. ‘Jesus Christ.’

That horrible sinking feeling came over me again, pricking at my eyes and sticking in my throat. ‘Dad?’

‘Sophie,’ he said, but this time it was weary, and heavy with disappointment. He uncovered his face, letting his hands fall to the table with a heavy thunk . ‘I thought Uncle Jack told you to stay away from them?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because he came to see me when he found out they had moved in. And we decided—’

‘Hold on,’ I cut in. ‘What do the Priestlys have to do with our family?’

My father double-blinked, his mouth twisting to a frown. ‘The Priestlys? Who are the Priestlys?’

‘The—’ I stopped abruptly. My whole brain shifted. Think . Who were the Priestlys? We had all just assumed the connection between Nic’s family and the old house. After all, it had never been put up for sale, which meant it was inherited or passed down, surely. Even my mother hadn’t questioned it. But now…

‘Sophie,’ my father said, his voice so quiet I had to lean towards him. ‘I don’t know where you got that idea from but they are definitely not Priestlys. They’re Falcones.’

He might as well have punched me square in the face.

I slumped backwards in my chair. How could I have been so stupid? So ignorant? Luca was right. I was wrong. I had been wrong all along. They had never identified themselves as Priestlys – I had plucked the name from an old neighbourhood legend and never thought to check whether it was true. The realization came upon me in a succession of lightning bolts. The Mediterranean complexion, the Italian dialogue, the Falcon crest. Nic’s face. Those damn eyes . The sudden hatred .

‘Falcone,’ I repeated, Fal-cone-eh , my voice sounding very far away as I tripped over the word that had just changed everything.

‘Yes.’ There was a heavy pause, and then, delicately, my father asked, ‘Do you remember who Angelo Falcone was?’

It was a painfully unnecessary question. The name was seared in my brain for ever.

‘Of course I remember.’ I rested my head on the cold metal table. I had looked right at Angelo Falcone’s picture fifty times, and yet it hadn’t clicked. I had studied Valentino’s portrait of him and hadn’t even made the connection between his face and the man in all the newspapers when it happened. The man with Nic’s eyes. Oh God .

I lifted my head. ‘He’s the man you killed.’

‘That’s right.’ My father had placed his hands in his lap so I could no longer see them, but I knew he was fidgeting. If I concentrated hard enough, I could see the vein in his temple pulse up and down against his skin. He started to grind his teeth – it was a habit he had picked up in prison. For a long moment, neither one of us said anything, but every time his molars rolled against each other, I winced.

I would never forget that name or that day for as long as I lived. But we had never talked about it, not properly. Maybe it was time.

‘It happened on Valentine’s Day,’ I said, breaking the silence. I had gotten a card from Will Ackerman that day at school. He had slipped it into my locker during recess, with his phone number scrawled on the back. It had a teddy bear holding a big heart on the front, and on the inside, a short poem about how he liked my hair. It wasn’t the most impressive literary offering, but I could have died and gone to heaven right then. He had been my crush since forever, and all my friends were burning up with jealousy.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was Valentine’s Day.’

‘There was a storm,’ I continued, my thoughts lost in another time and place. ‘I had a headache so I took some aspirin and went to bed early. I was just falling asleep when Mom burst into my room. She was crying, and I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me…’ I trailed off. I could see it was hard for him to hear it. It was harder for me to say it, but I was going to, because someone had lost his life that night, and I was only beginning to understand the true gravity of it. Nic’s father was dead. And all I had ever fixated on was how my father had been thrown behind bars because of a mistake he made when he was in the grip of fear during a dark, stormy night at the diner. ‘Mom said you had been closing the diner on your own when a man ran out of the shadows and started yelling things. You thought he was going to try and rob the place, so you took out the gun Jack gave you for Christmas and you shot him.’

‘And he died,’ he finished.

‘Yes,’ I echoed. ‘He died.’

‘And it turned out he wasn’t armed.’

God . ‘Right.’

‘And the gun I used didn’t have a permit.’

It gets worse . ‘Oh.’

‘I shouldn’t have been carrying it,’ he said, frustration spilling from his voice. ‘But it was late and I was nervous. Your uncle had warned me about the gangs around Cedar Hill at that time and I thought I needed the extra protection. I thought that man was going to attack me.’

‘So you shot him.’ My expression was unreadable. Inside, I was ice cold. ‘And now you’re doing time for manslaughter while Angelo Falcone’s sons—’

‘—are living in Cedar Hill beside my daughter,’ he finished, biting down on his lip before a curse word slipped out.

I was clenching my fists so hard my nails were digging into my palms. ‘And you didn’t think to share this massive piece of information with me?’

‘Jack and I didn’t want you or your mother panicking about it.’

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. ‘So you thought it would be better if one of Angelo Falcone’s sons filled in the blanks?’

‘I thought Jack would make sure you stayed away from them!’ he countered, his mounting anger beginning to match mine. If we kept this up, I’d be asked to leave by one of the prison guards.

‘You should have told me,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘I wouldn’t have freaked out. I could have handled it.’ Probably. Maybe. Eventually.

‘OK, what if you weren’t afraid, then?’ he said. ‘There was always the chance you might approach them, to try to apologize or make amends for what I did. I know you, Soph. You’ve got a good heart. It’s not foolish to expect something like that from you.’

‘That’s crazy, Dad!’ Maybe it wasn’t, but I was so riled up I wasn’t going to consider the chance he might be right. ‘And what about them staying away from me?’ I hissed. ‘They came into the diner right after they moved in! A less cryptic heads-up would have been nice. I thought Jack was just being weird!’

My father shook his head and sighed, his expression defeated. ‘Maybe we should have gone about it differently,’ he conceded.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You definitely should have.’

He watched me quietly for a moment. His eyes grew big and round until they dominated his weathered face; there was barely any blue left in them now, just stormy grey. ‘Sophie, now that you know the truth, please stay away from the Falcones, like Jack told you. There’s no knowing how deep their resentment towards me runs, or why they’re back in Cedar Hill again.’

‘OK,’ was all I could muster. I was too spent to argue any more. And besides, it’s not like the Falcones were clamouring to hang out with me anyway.

‘They’re a dangerous family in their own right,’ he continued, his breath hitching.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I vaguely remembered something from the time it happened – Angelo Falcone wasn’t exactly a stand-up citizen, but I could do with a refresher course on the details, considering I had deliberately avoided reading anything in-depth about my father’s victim.

‘It means I don’t like any of this,’ he said, and now there was panic pouring from his expression. Panic I could tell he had been trying to hide from me. ‘I don’t like that they’re near my daughter and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

You’ve already done enough , a part of me wanted to say, but I couldn’t be cruel. ‘They’re just boys,’ I said. ‘They’re the same age as me.’

‘Five minutes!’ shouted a stocky prison guard standing three tables over.

My father started wringing his hands. ‘Will you stay away from them? Please be careful. I’ll speak to Jack about this.’

‘They’re just boys,’ I repeated.

He closed his eyes and made an attempt to calm himself. ‘This is what prison does to you.’ When he opened them again, his face was still creased with worry.

I nodded, feigning understanding. ‘Do you think they’re back for something?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

Out of nowhere, the memory of the black-ribboned honey-pot dropped into my mind. I shook it away.