Page 28 of Glass Wings

“I know,” he says, weariness settling onto his shoulders like the jacket he wears. “You’ll rip me to shreds and feed me to the dogs you don’t have.”

The corner of my mouth twitches despite myself. “You always were bad at metaphors.”

“I learned from the best.”

Something shifts between us, not forgiveness, but a glimmer of hope for a future as brothers again.

“What’s it like being a dad?” I finally ask. The question has been gnawing at me for weeks now. Gray smiles, lines forming on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes truly showing his age.

“The biggest blessing in the world.”

The speaker overhead crackles. “Time.”

Gray’s eyes flick up, then back to me. “Tell Harley … that I’m rooting for her. That if she needs anything⁠—”

“She doesn’t need anything from you,” I say too fast, too sharp.

He flinches and nods. “Okay. The offer still stands.” He stands, the chair legs scraping. “Take care of yourself. Don’t swing unless you have to.”

“That advice comes a little late,” I say.

Gray hesitates, mouth open like there’s one more sentence but he can’t decide if it will help or hurt. He chooses to swallow it. “Bye, Easton.” He hangs up the phone. For half a second, he stands there like he might wait for me to say his name.

I don’t.

He turns and walks to the door. It clicks shut behind him.

I stay seated, the phone a heavy weight in my hand for a long time after the line goes dead. Harris finally taps the glass, and I hang up, standing on legs that feel like I’ve been running.

“Everything good?” Harris asks as he snaps the leash back to my chain.

“Define good,” I say. He grimaces sympathetically, unable to hide the emotion quick enough this time.

“Fair,” he mumbles.

We walk back the way we came. My mind running loops around the conversation Gray and I just had. I need to talk to Rick.

Back in the cell, the door shuts with its usual thunk; the sound never fails to remind me of a lid settling on a jar. I sit on the bunk, take out the paper Gray brought, and place it alongside Harley’s letter. Names for a daughter on one page. Names of men who might save her father on the other. My throat burns.

I flatten both sheets with my palms and stare until the letters swim. One is soft and crooked, smelling faintly like her. The other is a block of hard edges, with a smudge where Gray’s hand must have dragged through the ink. Brother to brother, I think … but the words don’t fit yet.

The kid in the next cell coughs. A tray rattles down the tier. Somewhere, someone laughs too loud, the sound cracking and rolling like a dropped glass on tile.

I pick up the pen Harris let linger on the slot longer than he should have, and pull a fresh sheet from the stack he “forgot” was extra. I write Harley’s name and pause. The line between what I want to say and what I should say stretches taut like wire.

Little Bird, I write. The letters look steadier than I feel.

Gray came, I write, and the ink looks like a bruise on the white paper. I didn’t expect to write that sentence ever again. I sketch the facts and not the ache that burns in my chest. He has a list of names, a bar, a quote.

Rick might be able to use it, I write. If it means I get to you sooner, I’ll take help from the devil and make him fill out a witness list.

I close with the same words I always do, the only promise I know how to pour truth into now, without cracking it.

Always yours,

Easton

I fold the letter slow and careful, slide it into the envelope, and lick the seal. The paper tastes like dust and soap and the inside of a place that wants to scrub the whole world off of you and never let you be clean.