Coming Home(170)

The first time Danny had been allowed to call Leah, his rush to explain the visiting instructions had overshadowed the brief respite brought on by her voice. Danny had been required to provide the Bureau of Prisons with a list of potential visitors, and in turn, each person would receive a packet in the mail. As soon as the forms were completed and sent back, the BOP would conduct a background check and either approve or deny the applicants. Danny would receive word when the process was complete, and then anyone who had received clearance would be permitted to visit.

He had also explained that his phone use was restricted to fifteen minutes a day with a cap of three hundred minutes per month, and that within those restrictions, he would have to divide his time between Gram, Jake, Tommy, and his family. Leah had told him not to worry, that she understood they wouldn’t be able to speak every day.

And then their conversation was cut off.

Fifteen minutes up. No warning. No countdown. Just a click, and then nothing.

He’d spent the rest of that day feeling completely unnerved instead of gratified.

He tried to be more aware of the time after that, but it was surprisingly easy to get lost within the confines of fifteen minutes. It happened almost every phone call—the abrupt disconnection when his time was up—and each time was just as unsettling as the first.

The ability to end a phone call with “good-bye” was a suddenly a luxury, something he hadn’t even anticipated losing because it was such a basic fundamental of life, he’d never even given it a second thought.

So many simple, every day privileges—gone.

He shouldn’t have been as shaken by this place as he was. Danny’s life had been far from easy, but he had always taken pride in his resiliency; never once had he succumbed to adversity. Never once did he give in to the struggle.

But in his life before this, there had always been something to throw his energy into. Some distraction. Some way for him to expend his suffering.

Here, there was nothing.

He had enrolled himself in classes, but they only occupied ninety minutes of his day. He checked books out of the library, but he couldn’t digest any of the words. Maybe it was because his thoughts were the only thing they couldn’t put restrictions on, but Danny found himself perpetually lost in his own mind.

He had no idea it could be such an ugly place.

Thoughts would creep in uninvited, wafting in as sinuously as smoke and choking him just as quickly: Jake making a poor decision that would cause the business to go under; Leah growing bitter and resentful—seeking solace in another man’s arms; Gram getting sick and dying before he was released.

Various horrors would flash through his mind like a slide show, over and over until he couldn’t reason through them anymore. He couldn’t determine what was real and what was fabricated, what was speculative and what was a guarantee.

Three weeks. Eighty-eight more to go.

He had no idea if this was part of the transition or if it would always be this way. Maybe his mind would eventually run out of nightmares. Maybe he’d just grow numb to them.

Or maybe his thoughts would wear him down until he couldn’t remember who he was before this.

His lawyer had told him this place would be tolerable. Since the judge hadn’t deemed Danny a danger to society, part of the plea agreement stated he could serve his sentence in a minimum-security prison, and Danny had lost count of how many times his lawyer assured him minimum-security prisons were more like dormitories than correctional facilities.

He wished he’d never heard that goddamn comparison—or at least that he hadn’t been foolish enough to believe it.