Conviction (38 page)

I
t’s supposed to be a longer process to visit someone in jail. I know because I looked at the application a couple times earlier on, when he
first went in and I was home by myself. But on the way there Trey tells me he worked something out with Kris Blaine, the guy who sells him the weed and whose dad is a cop; he doesn’t say
what, and I don’t really want to know.

He’s going back to New York tomorrow. He booked a red-eye last night because I told him to, after he said he’d go with me to the jail.
What about your game?
he said, and I
told him I didn’t think I was going to go. The game’s on Monday. Colin’s been texting to tell me they’re trying to hire private security guards, and I know what it’ll
look like to not go—that I’m a coward, that I don’t care about my team. But how can I get up there in front of everyone and go after Alex Reyes? I doubted Trey would blame me,
considering. He said he’d stay as long as I needed him, that he figured he owed me at least that much, but I know him being here would never start feeling like real life, for either of
us—it would only ever feel like penance.

A guard at some kind of security station ushers our car into a parking lot rimmed in chain-link fence and barbed wire, and Trey turns off the car and then doesn’t move. I don’t blame
him; my legs feel padlocked to my seat.

The stupid thing is, after all this, I still think I need my dad’s advice. About where to go from here, about the La Abra game. I don’t know how I’ll get through any of it.

“Well,” Trey says, and then nothing else. He takes out a clear plastic orange canister from his pocket and shakes out three small white pills and pops them in his mouth. I say,
“What is that?”

“Cocaine.” He sees my face. “Braden, come on. It’s prescription medication, all right?”

“For what?”

“Nosy much?”

“What is it?”

“It’s Ativan, okay? For anxiety.”

I say, “Oh.” He didn’t say this part last night, but I think I understood, after everything he told me, that it wasn’t just my dad Trey’s tried so hard to bury in
the past: I think he was more afraid of whoever he was himself while he stood there in my dad’s room that night. That’s how I would feel—I think it’s the same as how I
can’t imagine playing baseball again; baseball’s home to me, the place I’ve always gone to find myself—and I think Trey and I are alike in a lot of ways I never saw. I know
what it’s like to want to get away from yourself. Only I guess I never thought I could be someone else the way Trey always has. “Well—should we go?”

He leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes. I wonder if he ever prays. “Give me ten minutes for it to kick in.”

The hallway on our way in is gray and bleak, the concrete walls rising around us like we’re being sealed away from the world. When we go through the metal detector and
empty our pockets and hold out our arms for an officer to pat us down, I feel like bolting. I don’t, but I think I would’ve if Trey weren’t there. A stone-faced guard inspects our
IDs, turning them over in his hands and shining a flashlight on them, then walks us through double doors and another hallway and another door marked
VISITATION ROOM
and
tells us we’re allowed one brief hug or kiss at the beginning and end of the visit and that’s all. Trey looks like he wants to say something sarcastic, thinks better of it, and says,
instead, “All right, man, thanks.”

“Wait here, and we’ll bring him out.”

We sit down. I wonder if Trey’s pills are working. He looks—not scared, exactly, but something more like resolved. Grim. I say, “You were really going to just never see him
again?”

“That was the plan.”

The minutes pile like an avalanche as we wait. The visiting room has round tables and plastic chairs grouped methodically in the center, like a grade-school classroom with all the decorations
torn down. There are windows looking onto the hallway and cameras on the ceilings and fluorescent lights buzzing at a high pitch, and at one end of the room there’s a podium with an officer
seated behind it and another officer leaning against the wall under a sign that says
KEEP HANDS IN PLAIN VIEW AT ALL TIMES
. We’re the only ones in the room, but they
don’t look at us. I can feel the cutout of the chair pressing a pattern into my back, and I lean forward and sit on the edge of the seat. I don’t want this place to leave any mark on
me.

A phone rings. The guard behind the podium says something into a phone, then hangs it up.

The door in the back of the room opens, the sound huge in the room, and my dad comes in with a guard in uniform. My heart jackknifes in my chest. Up close, he looks different than the last time
I saw him—worn down, somehow, as if layers have melted off of him and he’s a purer version of himself. Or maybe it’s just that the shock on his face when he sees us—the way
he jerks reflexively backward and then walks forward, slow, until he’s standing in front of us—is so completely unguarded. I stand, instinctively. Trey doesn’t. The guard who
brought my dad in leaves, and the door slams shut behind him, echoing off the concrete walls.

“My God,” our dad says, his voice hushed, and he glances back over his shoulder like he’s seeing if anyone can overhear. “Here, here, have a seat,” he says, even
though Trey’s sitting down already, and then he sits, too. Then he tells Trey, like his mind is still trying to put together the pieces, “You look so old.”

Our dad must look different to Trey, too, and Trey doesn’t say it but I know somehow that’s worse. When you leave something behind, you want it to stay left there. Trey says, almost
loud enough to be overheard, “You thought time would just stop if you weren’t there to see it happen, or what?”

“I just—Jesus. It’s just you show up without any warning, and you don’t give me any time to—” My dad shifts in his chair, crosses his arms, and sticks them
under his armpits so his elbows make sharp points underneath the baggy tan shirt he’s in. He reaches up and runs his hands over his face and glances around the room, then back at Trey, and
then his eyes fill. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

My dad pretends not to hear. “Means more than you know that you’d come here,” he says softly. “B, I know it’s only four months when all’s said and done, but I
can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you. And I know you went through a lot with all this. I know that. Don’t think it means nothing to me.”

I know I need to say something; I can feel the words coiled and sharp inside me, trying to untangle. But my mind can only fumble around. I’d thought if all three of us were together again
things would make sense. I’d thought I’d get more answers. I’d thought I’d at least be able to formulate the questions.

“Listen,” my dad says, “there’s no privacy here, but, B, I need to talk to your brother about something—I’ve been holding on to it all these years, so I
just—if you can go sit over—”

Trey says, “You can say it to both of us.”

“It’s about that last night you were at home.”

Trey’s face goes hard, but he says, “You can say it to us both.”

“In that case.” My dad sucks in a long breath. “You want to know something, Trey, I still get nightmares about that night.”

“
You
get nightmares?”

My dad holds up his hands, his palms out so you can’t miss the scars there. “I did this to myself after.” He tries to smile. “If your right hand causes you to
sin—”

Trey says, “Fuck you.”

“Fair enough. But, Trey, I have to tell you, I heard you come in that night. That night the Zilkers called me. I heard you come in and I heard you open the drawer and I heard you take out
my Ruger. I wasn’t asleep.”

The color vanishes from Trey’s face, and my dad says, “God
damn
, Trey, I was waiting. You know that? I was waiting for you, and you couldn’t do it. You never had that in
you, did you? The one thing I tried to teach you all your life was how to fight back when it mattered, and you couldn’t do it even then. And I bet you spent all this time since then telling
yourself you were close to doing it, didn’t you? Staying away because you couldn’t stand that about yourself. I know you. But that’s a lie, Trey, and you know it. Maybe you scared
yourself, but you never would’ve gone through with it. You were always better than that.”

Trey shuts his eyes. I can feel him telling himself this’ll be over soon, that he’s going to walk out of here and put this out of his life; I can feel him telling himself
breathe,
breathe
. Finally, he says, “Listen. Braden lied for you and went to court for you and so I will swear on my life that he was telling the truth, and I don’t care if it’s wrong
and I don’t care if you never pay for any of it, but right now, to us, I want you to say you did it.”

“Keep your voice down, Trey, there’s—”

Trey lowers his voice. “I want you to say you did it. And I want you to tell Braden it wasn’t his fault.”

“Come on, Trey, you—”

“Say it.”

It might be the first time that, between the two of them, I see my brother win. My dad drops his gaze, clears his throat. He closes his eyes for a moment like he’s saying a prayer.

“That cop had it in for me from day one,” he says quietly, his eyes still closed. “When he pulled me over, you could see it all over his face what he thought of me. He was out
for me. He was just waiting for his chance.”

His voice is frayed. And something about the way he says it, almost like an incantation, makes me think that all he’s been doing these past weeks is turning this over and over in his mind.
He opens his eyes again and reaches out his hand like he wants to hold mine, but he looks toward the guard across the room and drops his hand. “You should’ve seen how he talked to me. I
was trying to go back and get you, B. I shouldn’t have left you alone like that, and I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have done any of it. And when he pulled me over, I was
scared out of my mind. I just kept thinking what if you got hit by a car, or what if you were done with me and I went back and you weren’t there—I knew I already lost you for good,
Trey, and, B, I just couldn’t take it if anything—so I told the cop I had to get back and get you. I wasn’t thinking right, I was so upset, and I told him what I did to
you.” It isn’t warm, but sweat’s beading on my dad’s forehead, and when he reaches up to wipe it off, I see his hands are trembling. “And he said I wasn’t fit to
be a parent. He said he was going to send someone after you, B, and he was going to take me in. He wanted to take you away from me for good. I know he did. And I just—you remember how he
treated you before—” He looks helplessly at me. “You have to believe me I never meant to do it and I’m sorry, I’m real sorry, and I wish I could take it back. But, B,
I did it for you.”

The room blurs. I say, strangled, “For
me
? You killed him because—”

Trey shoves back his chair and stands, the sound clattering across the room. “We’re going. Braden, get up. We’re leaving.”

My dad grabs his arm. “Wait, Trey, please, please, we’ve still got forty minutes left—”

“Don’t touch me.”

“We’re supposed to get a whole hour. Please. Please don’t leave.”

The guard is coming over to us, shouting at Trey he needs to remain seated and not touch or the visit will be terminated. Trey yanks his arm away from my dad. My heart is going like a jackhammer
in my chest, and when my dad turns to me, I feel frozen in place, and the look he gives me then sears me to my core. I don’t think for the rest of my life there will ever be another person
who loves me or needs me as much as he does.

“You’ve always been the only one who understood me, B,” he says urgently. “And I owe you my life. I always knew that about you, you know. I always knew God brought you to
me to save my life. And when I get out of here, we’ll figure everything out. I know you’ve got a big game coming up, so you just pitch the way I always taught you, all right? I know you
have it in you. I know you’ll make me proud. And when I come back, we’ll pick up the pieces and put everything back together again, and you’ll be so busy being knee-deep in scouts
all the time you’ll forget any of this ever happened. But, Braden, please—promise you won’t give up on me. Please. Like every other person who ever gave a damn about me. Will you
promise me that?”

T
he reaching, searching sound of a guitar is coming through the sanctuary door when I walk into the church foyer that night. The sanctuary
door’s unlocked, and Maddie’s in there practicing like I thought (like I hoped) she might be. When she sees me there, I catch the surprise on her face before her expression hardens,
less like she’s angry and more like she’s afraid, which is worse.

“Hey,” I say quickly. “Look, I know you don’t want to talk to me, but can I just—sixty seconds? Then I’ll leave you alone.”

She lets her fingers stray along the strings, and she takes her time deciding. Just when I’m certain she’ll tell me to get lost, she lets go of her guitar and it falls against her
body with a soft thud, the strap tugging against her shoulder. “Okay.”