Second Chance Vows novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Behind the Glass

The county jail visiting room had six stools bolted to the floor and a long pane of scratched glass.

My father sat on the middle stool with his hands on his knees.

I stood behind him against the wall, because he had asked me to come and not to speak.

They brought Trent in at ten past two, in an orange jumpsuit with his hands cuffed in front.

He had not shaved.

He sat down and picked up the phone, and my father picked up his.

For a while neither of them said anything.

"Hello, Uncle," Trent said at last, with a ghost of the old smile. "Come to gloat?"

"I came to look at you," my father said.

"And?"

"You look like your mother," my father said. "Right around the eyes."

Trent's smile slipped.

"She would have been ashamed," my father said. "I'm not sure yet what I am."

"Spare me."

"Why did you do it?" my father asked.

I had never heard his voice so level.

Trent leaned toward the glass.

"Do you know what it is to eat at another man's table for nine years?" he said. "To say thank you for a bed and thank you for school, and thank you for the shoes? To watch your son walk around that house as if it were a hotel he owned?"

"I never made you thank me for anything."

"You didn't have to."

"I took you in because you were my sister's boy," my father said. "I took you in because you were fourteen, and sitting alone at a funeral. I thought you would be my son as well."

"I was never your son."

"You were," my father said, and his voice finally cracked. "I told you so every night in the kitchen, and you said you knew."

Trent looked at the table.

"I put the sedative in the wine," he said at last, very low. "I wanted you to sleep. That's all it was."

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