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“Deborah…?” I said, quite stupidly, since I could see the phone lying there, several feet away from her ear.
She turned back to face me, almost as if she’d heard, and waited a moment—an interval filled with no more than an unblinking stare from that hard face that had become so monotonously unfriendly. Then she picked up the phone again.
“I’m not here to listen to your bullshit,” she said.
“But that’s…But then…But why?” I said, and in my defense I have to say that her comment had rendered me even stupider than I sounded. It was a true miracle of wit, in fact, that I could speak at all.
“I need you to sign some papers,” she said. She held up a sheaf of official-looking documents, and in spite of all the massive evidence to the contrary, I actually felt a small surge of relief. After all, what official documents could she possibly bother to bring down here, other than something dealing with my case? And since the true and hidden meaning of “my case” actually meant “my release,” a little ray of sunshine peeped out from behind the newly formed dark clouds.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll be happy to…You know that I…What are they?” I said, all pathetic eagerness to please once again.
“Custody,” she said, grinding the word out as if one more syllable would have broken her jaw.
I could only blink in surprise. Custody? Was she really going to take me into her house, assume the role of legal guardian to Dexter in
Disgrace, until such time as my good name was re-untarnished? It went far beyond what I hoped for—it sounded very much like a full pardon, if only a nonlegal one from Deborah. “Custody,” I repeated inanely, “well, of course, that’s—I mean, thank you! I didn’t think you would—”
“Custody for your kids,” she said, nearly spitting the words. “So they don’t go to a foster home.” And she looked at me as if it had been my plan, my entire purpose in life, to send children to orphanages.
Whether from the look or from her words, I felt so completely deflated that I had to wonder whether I would ever hold air again. “Oh,” I said. “Of course.”
Deborah’s look changed at last, which was all to the good. On the downside, however, what it changed to was a sneer. “You haven’t given those kids one fucking thought, have you?”
It may not stand as absolutely the best character reference for me, but in truth, I had not thought about the kids. Cody, Astor, and, of course, Lily Anne—they must have been scooped up somehow when I was arrested. And naturally, Deborah, as their closest relative—because of course my brother, Brian, would be totally out of the question, and…Honestly, I had not devoted even one gray cell to thinking about the kids, and I am quite sure that anyone with actual feelings would have a rather large lump of shame in their lap. I did not. In my defense, however, I would like to point out that I did have other things to think about—for instance, I was actually incarcerated. For multiple murders, remember? And unjustly. “Well,” I said, “I have been kind of, um…in jail?”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Not one fucking thought.”
For a moment I was too stunned to respond. Here I was in quite literal chains, with reason to think it would soon be my permanent condition, and she was blaming me for not thinking of the children. Who, it must be said, were perfectly free to wander around and sit on the swings and eat pizza or whatever they wanted. It was a monstrous injustice approaching even the unfairness of my imprisonment, but there it was, and at last my wits returned and brought with them a large helping of indignation.
“Deborah, that’s completely unfair,” I said. “I have been in here without any kind of…” And I trickled to a truly feeble halt, because once again, Deborah was holding the phone away from her head and waiting for me to stop talking.
When I did, she let it hang for another minute before she finally picked up the phone. “The papers give me full custody of the kids,” she said. “I’m leaving them with the guard.” She waved the papers. “Sign them.” She began to stand up, and panic flooded into me, from the basement up. My last, my only hope, and she was leaving.
“Deborah, wait!” I called.
Deborah paused in an awkward position, a kind of squat between standing and sitting, and it seemed to my fevered brain that she stayed like that for an awfully long time, as though she couldn’t wait to leave, but some stupid obligation had frozen her in place and kept her from fleeing something distasteful. We both thought she was going to leave anyway. But then, to my idiotic relief, she sat down and picked up the phone again. “What,” she said, in a voice as dead as it could be and still come from a living human mouth.
Once more I could only blink stupidly. The “what” of it seemed painfully obvious, so patently clear that I couldn’t think of any way to say it that wasn’t insulting her intelligence. I said it anyway. “I need your help,” I said.
And just to prove that she could insult my intelligence right back, she said, “For what?”
“To get out of here,” I said. “To find a way to prove that…that—”
“That you’re innocent?” she snarled. “Bullshit.”
“But—I am innocent!”
“The hell you are,” she said, looking and sounding angry for the first time, but at last she was finally showing a little emotion. “You left Jackie alone, you abandoned Rita and let her get killed, and you handed Astor over to a homicidal pedophile!” I could see the knuckles of her hand clutching the phone turning white. She took a deep breath, and her face settled back into cold indifference. “Show me the innocent part, Dexter. Because I don’t see it.”
“But…but, Debs,” I whimpered. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
“This time!” she snapped.
“Well, but…but,” I stammered, “but that’s what I’m in here for. This time. And I didn’t…”
“This time,” she repeated softly. But even though her voice had softened, her eyes were still hard and bright. She leaned in close to the window. “How many other times did you kill somebody, Dexter? How many more times would you if you got out?” It was a fair question, and the answer would certainly compromise my innocent plea, so I wisely said nothing, and Deborah went on.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “I can’t help it. I know you say Dad set the whole thing up so you—” She looked away again. “I can’t do it anymore. I thought I could live with it, close one eye and just…” She looked back at me, and there was no softness in her anywhere. “But now this, and I don’t have any idea who the fuck you are anymore. Maybe I never did—and you could’ve been lying all along about Daddy, and…I mean, he was a cop, and a Marine vet! What would he have said, Dexter? What would Daddy say about the shit you just pulled?”
