The Marsh King's Daughter(8)
Since that day I’ve driven past the Marquette Branch Prison at least a hundred times, every time we take Mari to see her specialist, or bring the girls shopping, or when we go to Marquette to see a movie. The prison isn’t visible from the highway. All passersby see is a winding drive bracketed by two old stone walls; it looks like the entrance to an old-money estate that leads through the trees to a rocky escarpment overlooking the bay. The sandstone administration buildings are on the state’s historic registry and date to the prison’s opening in 1889. The maximum security section where my father was housed is made up of six level-five single-cell housing units surrounded by a twenty-foot-thick stone wall topped with a ten-foot wire fence. The perimeter is monitored by eight gun towers, five equipped with cameras to observe activity inside the housing units as well. Or so says Wikipedia. I’ve never been inside. I checked out the prison once using Google Earth’s satellite view. There were no prisoners in the yard.
And now the prison population has been reduced by one. Which means that in a few short minutes, I’m going to have to tell my husband the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about who I am and the circumstances surrounding my birth, so help me God.
As if on cue, Rambo barks a warning. Seconds later headlights sweep the yard. The yard light kicks on as an SUV pulls into the driveway. It’s not Stephen’s Cherokee; this vehicle has a light bar on top and the state police logo on the side. For a fraction of a second I let myself believe I can answer the officers’ questions and get rid of them before Stephen gets home. Then the Cherokee turns in immediately after. The interior lights of both vehicles come on at the same time. I watch Stephen’s puzzlement turn to panic when he sees the officers’ uniforms. He runs to me across the yard.
“Helena! Are you all right? The girls? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“We’re fine.” I signal Rambo to stay and descend the porch steps to meet him as the officers approach.
“Helena Pelletier?” the lead officer asks. He’s young, somewhere around my age. His partner looks even younger. I wonder how many people they’ve questioned. How many lives their questions have ruined. I nod and grope for Stephen’s hand. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about your father, Jacob Holbrook.”
Stephen’s head whips around. “Your fath— Helena, what’s going on? I don’t understand. The escaped prisoner is your father?”
I nod again. A gesture I hope Stephen will take as both apology and confession. Yes, Jacob Holbrook is my father. Yes, I’ve been lying to you from the day we met. Yes, the blood of this evil man flows through my and your daughters’ veins. I’m sorry. Sorry you had to find out like this. Sorry I didn’t tell you before now. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
It’s dark. Stephen’s face is in shadow. I can’t tell what he’s thinking as he looks slowly from me to the officers, to me, and back to the officers again.
“Come inside,” he says at last. Not to me, but to them. He drops my hand and leads the officers across our front porch and into our house. And just like that, the walls of my carefully constructed second life come tumbling down.
4
The Michigan State Police officers sit on our living room sofa, one at each end, like a pair of blue bookends: same uniforms, same height, same hair, hats placed respectfully on the middle cushion, and knees splayed because Stephen is not a tall man and the sofa sits low. They seem bigger than they did in our yard, more intimidating, as if the authority their uniforms give them somehow also makes them physically larger. Or maybe the room only feels smaller with them in it because we so rarely have visitors. Stephen offered to make coffee when he invited them in. The officers declined, which I was glad about. I certainly wouldn’t want them to linger.
Stephen is perched on the armchair next to the sofa, a songbird ready to take flight. His right leg is jigging and his expression says clearly that he’d rather be anywhere but here. I’m sitting in the only remaining chair on the opposite side of the room. That the physical distance between me and my husband is as great as the room will allow isn’t lost on me. Nor is the fact that since he welcomed the officers into our home, Stephen has been making an obvious and concerted effort to look anywhere but at me.
“When was the last time you saw your father?” the lead officer asks as soon as we’re settled.
“I haven’t spoken to my father since the day I left the marsh.”
The officer raises an eyebrow. I can imagine what he’s thinking. I live fifty miles from the prison where my father was incarcerated for thirteen years and I’ve never gone to visit him?
“So, thirteen years.” He takes a pen and notepad from his shirt pocket and makes like he’s going to write the number down.
“Fifteen,” I correct. After my mother and I left the marsh, my father roamed the Upper Peninsula wilderness for two years before he was captured. The officer knows this as well as I do. He’s establishing a baseline, asking a question he already knows the answer to so he can tell going forward when I’m lying and when I’m telling the truth. Not that I have any reason to lie, but he doesn’t yet know that. I understand he has to treat me as a suspect until proven otherwise. Prisoners don’t generally escape from a maximum security prison unless they have help, whether someone on the inside or someone on the outside. Like me.