The frigid weather freezes the tears welling in my eyes. I blink them away.
“Thanks, Darren.” I hold out my hand, and he takes it eagerly.
I expect him to drag me back inside, but he hesitates. “I know it’s none of my business, but you seemed really upset on your phone. You okay?”
“No,” I say. He starts walking, and because I have nowhere else to go, I walk with him. I’m about to say,“It has nothing to do with you,”but that’s a lie. It has a lot to do with him. I simply didn’t realize until now that it wasn’t his fault.
This is the man Poppy Grace wanted to save.
If I’d only let her save me, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
POPPY
Ifreshened up all the makeup I cried off before leaving the truck, so I’m reasonably presentable when I head back into the church. Once again, I’m greeted by the sounds of ‘80s music—“Pictures of You” by The Cure, a song that has always hit me hard, but never harder than after essentially breaking up with two men in the same day.
If Arrow had told me he wanted to meet, how different would everything have gone with Oliver?
If Oliver hadn’t left me today, I never would have sent that message to Arrow.
And now I’m alone, listening to a song Dad told me about in his first letter from prison.
It was the only song I played until the very next letter, when he gave me a new song to listen to, and a new one in the letter after that. How many hundreds of songs did he tell me about over the years? I listened to every one.
The music is louder at the door, and louder still when I open it. Unsurprising. What is surprising, though, is that there are more people here now. At least a dozen, maybe more. Where it was somber when I left, the mood is almost lively.
My great aunt is monitoring the memorial table, bless her heart, and my uncle and aunt are talking to three men I’ve never met. Uncle Bill waves me over.
“This is Poppy, Kevin’s daughter. Poppy, these gentlemen are?—”
“Not gentlemen,” one of the men says, roaring with laughter and elbowing his friend. The sound is so big it rattles the folding chairs stacked against the wall. Between the three men, I count at least a dozen tattoos.
They’re returning citizens.
They were incarcerated with my dad.
I hold a hand out to the most jovial of the three. I’d guess all three of them are in their 40s—younger than my dad, but then most people don’t serve fifteen years. A quick survey of the room tells me only a few of the men here are around my dad’s age at all.
Each of them shake my hand, and they introduce themselves as Mike, Miguel, and Mikhail.
I give a soft laugh, feeling too raw and tender for much more. “Are those your real names?”
“Real as Mikey’s smile,” Miguel tells me, elbowing the jovial man, who’s missing a tooth.
“We were in Collins with your dad,” Mike says. “He was as good a cellmate as I ever had.”
“I’m glad. Thank you all for coming,” I say, hoping they’ll get the hint and let me go mope in a corner by myself.
They don’t.
“He was a good guy,” Miguel says.
“Moody as he—” Mikhail clears his throat and he looks heavenward and crosses himself, even though this isn’t a Catholic church. “Sorry. He was moody, is my point. Nice otherwise, though.”
“And funny. That guy could find something to laugh at in anything.” Mike elbows Miguel. “Remember the time with the cards?”
Miguel snorts and calls another man over, this one older. “We were cellmates same time as Mike and your dad.”
