wouldn't be gone. He'd still be there. Always there.
His skin looked gray and hung on loose flesh. He'd put on weight-a lot of weight-his face blown wide around the familiar inexpressive eyes.
Whatever Tim had hoped to feel, he did not. Standing in the beating sun of the parking lot, he sensed a hollowness, not inside him but all around, as if he lay on the brink of a void too vast to comprehend. He grasped his own unimportance and, by extension, the insignificance of the man opposite the fence. It left him feeling dwarfed, though by what, precisely, he was not certain. There was a great horror in it, to be sure, but also a faint ray of a greater freedom he'd yet to encounter.
Kindell claimed his rock in a fist and withdrew back into shadow.
Tim looked at the visitor entrance, but, suddenly and clearly, he knew that he wouldn't go in, wouldn't confront Kindell through a mesh screen.
Tim thought of the vulnerability of his living child. He pictured the familiar scenarios-the kidnapping, the act of God, the proverbial bus. In every moment a hundred things can go wrong. But moment after moment they don't.
Right now Dray would be packing a picnic for the park. Tyler on the kitchen floor, wearing Evel Knievel and applying a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid to a knee scrape that had healed three days ago. Bear and Michelle Westin, D.D.S., on their morning walk, Boston running laps around them, an endless loop of Rhodesian Ridgeback.
Tim turned and headed back to the Explorer.
Ninety Days After Walker's Death
Kaiyer walk hisself.'
'Okay, bub.' Tim still guided Tyler through the penitentiary's outermost door. On its backswing the glass caught a reflection of the stern razor wire capping the double chain links. Tim paused, taking in the grounds. The place was removed from time, somehow. It seemed not a speck of dirt had shifted in the months since Tim had delivered the boy's grandfather.
Ahead the sally-port gate, the guard tower, COs with rifles.
And Dray leaning against the grille of her Blazer, arms crossed, face tilted to the sun. She took note of their accelerating progress back across the empty visitor lot. Tyler's steps grew shorter and choppier.
Halfway there he said, 'Daddy up.'
Tim held out his thumbs until the tiny hands grasped them, then lifted his son, seating him against his side.
They reached the Blazer and stopped. Tim took a breath and exhaled hard.
Dray said, 'I bet.'
Tyler squirmed a bit, so Tim set him down. Ty picked at the Scooby-Doo Band-Aid across the toe of his sneaker. Dray studied them, her face proud and tender, the sun shining straight through her ice green eyes.
'C'mon,' she said. 'Let's get you boys home.'
