Chapter 22: Visiting Hours

Hallie's POV

I filled out the visitor form at the county jail on Wednesday, in block capitals, with a borrowed pen.

Name of inmate: Brock Kimmel.

Relationship to inmate: none.

The deputy at the desk looked at it for a long time.

"He has to agree to see you," he said.

"I know."

He took the form through a door.

I sat on a bolted chair in a hall that smelled of bleach and boiled coffee, and I waited, and I understood what the wait had been for Gage.

Three years of it.

Brock had never once had to sit in a hall and wait to be let in.

The deputy came back.

"He accepted," he said. "Booth four."

It was a small gray room with a stool and a glass wall and a black phone on a hook.

Brock was already sitting on the far side.

He wore the orange county jumpsuit, and his beard had grown in uneven, and the skin under his eyes was gray.

He looked at me, and picked up the phone before I'd sat down.

I sat and picked up mine.

"You came," he said.

"I did."

"I thought you wouldn't."

"I didn't think you'd say yes."

His mouth twitched.

"Everybody said no this week," he said. "My mother. My lawyer. Rae."

"Rae took a plea on the false report. She starts sentencing next month."

"I heard."

"I didn't come to tell you that."

He waited.

He was good at waiting, I realized.

He had always waited for the other person to fill the silence.

I didn't fill it.

A minute went by.

"How's the boy?" he said finally.

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