Bury Me(49)

“I hate that everything seems to keep snowballing ever since that night. And I hate myself for being just the tiniest bit happy that the destruction of your life might be the only reason you acknowledged my existence in two years,” he admits.

I stop searching through the phone book to look at him questioningly.

“I thought you said I started acting differently and began talking to you right before that night?”

He shrugs. “You did, but it felt fake for some reason. Nothing at all like it has been the last few weeks. I mean, something about the different way you dressed and the way you wore your hair the first couple of times you spoke to me felt like it actually matched your personality, but I don’t know. It was just weird how it happened so out of the blue, and even though I liked it that you were finally talking to me, it never felt genuine.”

I look back down at the phone book before I start comparing his blue eyes to oceans or the sky or something else that only stupid girls do.

“So what you’re saying is that all it took was a huge, bloody gash in my forehead and a little memory loss to make me a more honest person?” I ask.

“As horrible as that sounds, yes,” Nolan agrees.

I swallow back the need to laugh long and hard. Just moments ago I daydreamed about slicing off his hand, all the while pretending I wasn’t bothered by his touching me. It makes me want to roll my eyes that he’s so clueless.

“I just want to help you get to the bottom of this, so you can stop feeling so angry and finally be able to move on,” he tells me.

If only it were that simple. Poor, clueless Nolan.

“Aha! Found it,” I announce, my finger underneath the name I’ve been searching for. “Strongfield Penitentiary.”

This prison is the fourth one out of five listed on the papers I found in my father’s safe for potential institutions Tobias could be relocated to. Nolan suggested I start calling the prisons to see if he’s currently an inmate at any of them. The first three informed me that they didn’t have an inmate by that name, nor had they ever in the past.

Picking up the phone on the counter, I turn the dial while Nolan rattles off the numbers for me. Someone picks up after the first ring and I explain once again that I’m looking for a relative by the name of Tobias Duskin. I’m losing a little hope at this point, though. He might not even be alive anymore, let alone housed in the only other prison within easy driving distance from here.

The woman puts me on hold and it only takes a few minutes for her to come back on the line. “Yes, we do have a man here by the name of Tobias Duskin. He’s been here since he was transferred in 1947.”

“Don’t you mean 1946?” I ask, knowing the date of the transfer request on the form I saw was exactly nine months before I was born and the whole reason I put everything together. Maybe that was some sort of weird, coincidental mistake, and my father wrote the wrong date. Maybe I jumped to conclusions because that answer made so many things fall into place and gave them an explanation, instead of jumbled nonsense in my head. Her private nightly meetings might not have been definitive proof of an affair, maybe it was just…I don’t know, family stuff. Stranger things have happened, especially recently. It’s not like I found a birth certificate in the file listing Tobias as my father.

The woman tells me to hold again and I hear her shuffling through papers. After a few minutes, she comes back on the line. “No, it was definitely 1947, although we did receive the first request in 1946. Unfortunately, we were full at that time and couldn’t accommodate the request. It says here that on September 3, 1947, we received a phone call from his previous place of incarceration, Gallow’s Hill. It doesn’t give much of an explanation on the paperwork I have access to; it just says an emergency call was placed requesting transfer immediately because of a dangerous, possibly life-threatening event that Gallow’s Hill was unable to handle. He was picked up by us that same day.”

I barely pay attention to what she says after she informed me of his official transfer date, and when she rattles off visitation days and hours, at least I snap to it long enough to scribble those down on the sales ledger next to the phone that’s open to a blank page. When she asks me if I need anything else, I don’t bother answering her; I just hang up the phone.

“I’m guessing by what I heard you found the right prison. Did he die or something? Is that why you look like you’re in shock?” Nolan asks, pulling the ledger across the counter toward him to see what I wrote down.