Chapter Thirty Seven: Reopening Old Wounds
River Jenkins

As I step through the visitation room’s double doors after the guard waved at the camera for them to let me pass through the doors, I feel a wave of sickness wash over me.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I had absolutely nothing to eat or drink this morning before I picked Sophia up from her house, I would have most likely already puked my damn lungs out.

The guard steps through the doors first, leading me to another hallway that lead to the closed off solitary rooms where sick inmates would get their visitors.

As we walked closer to his room, memories start to flood my mind.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” I ask Beck the second he steps into my room.

He was sweaty because he came from practice a few minutes ago. His white shirt was covered in dirt and grass shards. His hair was unruly, standing up in every direction, even when he raked his fingers through it.

The question came abruptly; I didn’t even get the chance to greet him properly.

He frowns when he sits down onto the foot of my bed, chuckling as if the question was weird coming from me.

“I know that. Why?” He asks, a little unsure.

I was sitting at my desk, watching him carefully.

My father hasn’t hit me for a while now. He hasn’t spoken more than twenty words, actually. It was a relief, but something about the way he ‘forgot’ about me was a little unsettling.

As I started to feel relieved, Beck started to backtrack.

He rarely smiles. He rarely comes into my room to ask me if I wanted to play football with him in the yard. He rarely eats at the dinner table with us anymore. He’s acting strangely and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.

And I think it has something to do with the notebook I have found.

“I just want you to know that you can tell me anything.” I tell him, making sure to put emphasis on the word ‘anything’.

I’m his big brother and he needs to know that I’m there for him.

“You’re acting weird.” He chuckles yet again, but something about his chuckle even seemed unsettling. “Is there something I need to know? Are you dying or something?”

I laugh, shaking my head. “Definitely not dying.” I tell him. “But on a more serious note… Beck, you’re not yourself lately. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He says, his smile faltering. His lips were now set into a firm line.

“I found a notebook under your bed, Beck… There are poems written inside of it. Care to tell me what they mean?”

I didn’t want to think of the poems as something to be serious, but something in the way they’re written made me feel more on guard. There was something wrong with Beck.

His features changed so damn fast.

He looked uncomfortable to say the least.

I frown, knowing that the poems meant something more than just being poems.

I knew they meant something more.

“They’re just poems for school, River.” He finally says.

It wasn’t just poems, it was the fucking aftermath of what my abusive drunk of a father did to them when I wasn’t there to protect them. There, written in black on the white page, was the evidence of what my dad did to my mom and Beck.

I knew it was a bad idea to come here.

I knew being here would reopen more wounds…wounds I forgot I had.

I had to bite my tongue when the guard stopped in front of a closed off cell with nothing but a small peek-through window, and a door handle. When he opens the door, I smell the cologne I absolutely despised with everything inside me.

My dad’s cologne.

Even in the prison cell wherein my father rotted for months didn’t rid him from his cologne. I smelled it through the stale air that smelled like cheap tobacco, bad plumbing and a hint of urine coming from the steel toilet in the corner of the room. If those smells didn’t rid my nostrils from his cologne, nothing will.

I don’t think I can forget the smell of his cologne anyways.

It always lingered in the air; even after all this time.

The cologne was so strong that it burned the back of my throat when I inhaled.

“Ten minutes.” The guard reminds me. “There are cameras inside his room. If I see your hands underneath the table, I will cut your little visitation shorter.”

“Nothing would make me happier.” I tell him, sidestepping past him and into my father’s cell.

The guard closes the door behind me and I look right—to the corner of the wall—and there it was: the camera the guard kept mentioning. At least I knew that there was someone watching us, in case my dear old dad tried to do something.

The room was small, quite isolated. There was a small barred window straight ahead, a single bed with a thin white sheet draped over it, a small wooden end table beside the bed and a toilet and a sink to wash your hands, and the table the guard mentioned right in the middle of the room and a wooden chair behind it.

The guard didn’t know that I wasn’t going to move to sit at the table. I was going to stand by the door the entire ten minutes I have to be inside this room, hoping that the ten minutes would pass by fast so that I could leave here as fast as I came.

I clench my hands into fists when they started to shake.

There, lying on the bed that seemed too comfortable for a man like my father than what he actually deserved was the man that haunted my dreams.

He had the thin white sheet draped over him.

His head was resting on the thin, uncomfortable looking white pillow that matched the colour of the sheets, if it wasn’t so dirty, that is. There was a book inside his left hand while the other held his head upright, underneath his pillow.

The only colour inside the entire room was the sunlight peeking through the window and onto my father’s pale face as he read his book, completely oblivious to the fact that his son was standing near the door.

He has a beard that hasn’t been cut for months. He has dark shadows underneath his eyes. His cheeks are hollowed. His fingernails are chewed, his lips chapped… He looked skinnier somehow… sicker. 

He looked… different…and he looked nothing like the man who would beat me to a pulp when I didn’t wash his car because I was busy doing my homework. He was weak here. He barely held the book he was reading right.

The cancer was getting to him.

Good.

My father’s head turns slightly and when his eyes landed on mine, my breath hitched inside my throat. It felt like the air got knocked from my lungs. I ignore the uneasiness I felt looking back at him and decide to swallow down my fear I had of this man lying on his literal death bed.

Those eyes.

Those damn eyes that haunted me for years on end.

They were staring back at me.

His eyes were the same while the rest of his features have changed. He was definitely skinnier. He was pale in the face. His hair has thinned out and greyed, he was nearly bald if it wasn’t for the patch of hairs he had on his head.

“You came.” He says, coughing like a madman afterwards.

He had to set the book he was reading down onto the end table beside his bed to cover his mouth. He coughed so much that there was blood on his hands when he pulled away after he composed himself.

I didn’t reply.

“You’ve grown.”

I laughed. I actually laughed at the man lying on the bed in front of me.

“Don’t act like you care about my existence.” I speak for the first time since I entered his cell. I shake my head at the man lying on the bed. “I know what you’re trying to play at here. You’re dying and suddenly want to make up for the horrible things you did in the past to make yourself feel better.”

He just looks at me.

“The fact that you want to make amends for what you did makes me want to laugh, really.” I run my fingers through my hair, feeling my hands shaking when I do. I wasn’t filled with fear anymore. I was angry. “You kill my family. Rot in jail for months. Get diagnosed with cancer. And now you want to apologize because you’re on the verge of dying?”

“River, please.”

“No.” My hands were now clenched at my sides as I watch the man I used to call father lying on the bed, just staring back at me with regret written on his face. “You don’t get to play that game, father. You don’t get to feel bad for what you have done.”

He wants to apologize like everything he did in the past would be undone, like my family would return to me again, like I was never abused in the past, like the sins he committed can just disappear into thin air by a single damn apology.

Break a plate and it stays broken. Kill your family and they stay dead.

An apology won’t bring them back.

An apology won’t put that plate back together.

“I asked you to come because I wanted to make things right with you, River.” He says, wiping his bloodied hand against the already dirty handkerchief he had in his hand. “What I did was unforgivable, yes.”

“It is unforgivable. Yes. You’re right about that.” I scrub my hand over my face, feeling tiny beads of sweat coating my hand as I did so. I didn’t realise I was starting to feel very hot inside of this small cell. “You killed your own family.”

A pained expression was now evident in his eyes. “I can’t take the things I did in the past back, but I can apologize and hope that you can somehow forgive me in the future, before I die.”

Apologizing to a broken plate won’t make it whole again.

Apologize for killing your own damn family won’t bring them back again.

“Apologize?” I scoff. “You want to fucking apologize!” I shake my head, violently. “What exactly are you trying to apologize for, father? For the fact that you have abused me for my entire childhood because I didn’t do your bidding or the fact that you murdered your own wife and own son just because you wanted to show me that you could do it?” I didn’t wait for him to reply before I continued my onslaught. “You murdered them after beating them to a fucking pulp, and now you want to apologize like it would bring them back again? Like it would erase every single bad thing you did to us?”

He erupts into another coughing fit.

“I’m sorry, River. I am so sorry.” He finally mutters, wiping his mouth with the handkerchief.

I scoff this time, refraining myself from walking over to the bed and smack some sense into him. I wanted to say that apologizing won’t bring them back, but I didn’t. He didn’t deserve any more of my breath I already lost on him. “You can shove your apologies up your fucking ass.”

I turn on my heels and knock on the door to leave.

The door opens not long after.

“Are you really willing to carry this hatred with you for the rest of your life?”

I look at him over my shoulder. “I will carry this hatred to the ends of the earth if I have to, but forgiving you isn’t an option, father. I will never, ever forgive you for what you did to us.”

“Please, River…”

I look at my father. “Are you apologizing because you don’t want to go to hell?” I ask. “Because if that’s the case, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you have a one way ticket straight to hell. That is a fact.”

I turn around and make a promise to myself to never set my foot here again.

My father can rot in this place.

The sooner, the better.

• • •

“I didn’t find any closure.” I tell Sophia when we drive out of the jail’s gates. “It only opened the damn wounds I tried so hard all these months to heal.” I didn’t even notice that I was clutching the steering wheel so hard, but when it started to hurt, I loosened my grip. “It only worsened things. It flooded my mind with memories I tried so hard to suppress. Seeing him made me realise that he will never change and that this was just a sick way for him to lessen his guilt.”

Sophia nods the entire time from what I could see in my peripheral vision. “I’m sorry.” She says, her voice soft, carrying sadness. “I don’t know what to say…”

“Don’t say anything.” I tell her, wanting nothing more than to take her hand in mine so I could feel the warmth in them once more. “Just don’t let me be alone today. I know it’s a lot to ask, and I don’t deserve any more, if any, favours, but please, Sophia…I don’t want to be alone.”

She nods again. “I won’t leave you today. I won’t leave you… ever.”

I hope she keeps that promise because I can’t do this by myself.