And the healing began.
“I hope you didn’t come here to criticize my life choices,” she said.
“No, but it’s a big leap.”
He seemed concerned. Her mother often wore that same expression.
“This is me now,” she said. “Creativity is healing. You should try it. You have a high-stress occupation. Pottery is very meditative and calming.”
“Not really into that stuff.”
“Everybody should create something.”
“I think the last thing I made was—” He stopped abruptly, obviously changing his mind, and said, “some kind of macaroni art in grade school.”
She wondered what he’d almost said. “That’s a shame. But I know you didn’t come all the way here from San Bernardino to talk about crafts.” Hand on a hip, she asked, “I’m ready to hear what you have to say.”
“Let’s sit down.”
Sit down. This was not going to be good.
Her father was dead. That was it, she decided.
She’d waited for this day for so long, and now she felt a surprising threat of tears. She’d never gone to see him in prison. Just couldn’t do it. And as far as she knew, her mother had gone only a couple of times. And now if the news was of his death, she found herself feeling guilty about not visiting him. How stupid was that?
The sun was setting, so she opened the curtains and they sat down at the kitchen table. Daniel seemed to struggle for words.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“No, in fact he’s very much alive.”
She was both relieved and disappointed. San Quentin was eight hours away, more if the traffic was bad, but still too close. Could his very proximity pull her back into his orbit of decay? “Interesting,” she said calmly, going very still. Not a knee shake or the turning of a hand into a fist. She didn’t clutch at the denim of her jeans. She didn’t blink or raise an eyebrow.
“Five days ago he contacted me and offered to show us where his victims are buried.”
Promising, but also something her father had said before. “That’s excellent news. The victims’ families deserve closure.” She glanced at her shelves of pottery and suddenly felt Daniel’s earlier sense of displacement. The pottery, this house, the ancient truck outside, waiting to go somewhere else that wasn’t here. This area, her clothing, all seemed foreign now, the work of someone else who was strong and centered. “Thanks for letting me know.”
He had to leave. She needed to be alone. She sucked in a wobbly breath and nodded so he would think she was okay, but the nod was jerky. She probably wasn’t fooling him. “That’s good. That’s very good,” she added. He’d most likely come as a courtesy, so she didn’t hear the news from somewhere else. “I’ll tell my mother.”
“That’s not all,” he said.
What else could there possibly be?
“He had one stipulation.” He looked down at his hands, then back up. He had a small round scar near his eyebrow. Chicken pox? Piercing scar? Piercing.
“He won’t lead us to the burial sites unless you come along.”
Reni’s brain shut down and her gaze highlighted objects, trying to draw her away from the pain in her chest. The vivid yellow in a painting on the wall, the glass her guest had drunk from. She would have to get rid of that. It would always remind her of this moment.
“I can’t.” She hadn’t seen her father since the day he was taken away in handcuffs, calling her baby girl as the cops led him off. Thirty years. That’s how long it had been. “That’s impossible.”
“I thought you’d say so.” His voice was soft. Did he use that voice when interrogating criminals? It was a good one, with just the right tone. “I get it.”
People often asked what it was like to be the daughter of a serial killer. She didn’t blame them for being curious. Sometimes, in order to stop further questions, she just told them it was awful. One word and done. Other times, when she was feeling especially generous and in the mood to share or maybe even try to put her feelings out there in the world so they weren’t such a weight to carry, she gave them the short version of the truth. It had to be short, because no words existed that could adequately convey the damage to her soul and the empty yet painful pit her father’s actions had left in her belly. The best she could do was chip a piece from the multilayered truth. Sometimes, depending on her frame of mind, she would suggest they imagine the thing they cherished most in the world, something that made them feel safe and loved, and turn that upside down. The arms that encircled you becoming a monster. The mouth that read to you at night and gave you a good-night kiss becoming a wound of lies, a dark cavern of crawling bloatflies.
But it was much more complex than that because the heart still remembered the love that went both ways, that flowed in and out. And the bond between father and daughter was unique and special. It pulsed and generated love on a cellular level. And the evil deeds, no matter how old she got or how many lives she lived in order to step out from under his shadow, couldn’t drive out the memories of the person she’d known and loved. So now, even at the age of thirty-eight, when she thought of him, it was still with a familiar ache of the soul as she mourned the loss of the man she’d thought he was, and not the man he’d become. And she continued to find it impossible to come to terms with the fact that those two conflicting people still resided in one body, that he was still alive, rotting away on death row, passing the time until his final goodbye.
Daniel was quietly waiting.
How could she possibly see her father again? How could she possibly keep herself from shattering? Her entire life since his arrest had been trying to move on, pretending he was dead. Trying to get him out of her heart when he once was her heart. She wasn’t sure she could live through even a short encounter.
“What does he want?” she managed to whisper.
“I don’t know. Just to see you, maybe?”
“There has to be more to it than that.” She picked up a tube of lip balm from a pottery bowl on the table. The balm smelled like lavender. She got up and threw it away. She grabbed Daniel’s glass and threw it in the trash too. The whole house would have to go, and she would have to burn her clothes and move far away to a place that was nothing like this. Mars maybe.
“You’ve got time,” Daniel said. “Day trips for killers on death row don’t come easy. And we’ll have to get the prison staff to sign nondisclosures; the last thing we want is media presence or onlookers increasing the potential escape risk. Your father won’t be told when the excursion will take place, just in case he has someone working on the outside.”
She had to give him credit for not mentioning the glass.
“So unblock your phone. Wait for my call. I’ll start the paperwork, and if you decide to do it, this will give you time to talk it over with your mother.” As an aside, he added, “Just so you know, he didn’t ask to see her.”
“It will bring the families closure,” Reni said, trying to convince herself.
“It might bring you closure too.” He blinked a little too slowly, as if tamping something down as he went for a positive spin. A few more years and a few more murders and that kind of thinking would be burned out of him.