Chapter Twenty-one

Edward’s mother didn’t have very high opinions of the outdoors. That was a popular opinion in Hillborough, especially at that time of the year when light breezes turned to icicles with a few minutes’ warning. She only ever walked to the grocery store a few times every month to get food and stayed inside all the time other than that. Because of that, she didn’t have any idea how to get directions to the city prison or call a taxi. She had to have Edward call one for her, to the vexation of the prison guards who had to arrange the back-and-forth phone call. Even once she was there, she had no idea what to do and stood around in the parking lot perplexed until one of the site’s workers came by and asked if she needed help. That worker was the one to take her to the conference room to meet Edward.

He looked like he hadn’t slept at all during the two months he had been behind bars. He was thinner than he normally looked, especially with the amorphous prison uniform over his body like a shroud. He was sitting behind a dirty glass panel that separated visitors from inmates at the cost of barely being able to see through it, holding a phone to his ear. He was sitting with his eyes at the table, tracing shapes and letters into the dust on the table with the knuckles of his fist just to keep himself busy.

When Edward saw his mother, his grip on the phone tightened. She picked up the phone on her end and did her best to attempt a tired upward curl of her lips.

“How are you?” she asked, not making eye contact. It had been so long since he heard her voice. It was deeper than last time. She had made a solemn transition into old age.

He nodded, forgetting the words to say for a moment. “I’m holding up. How’s Scott?”

“He couldn’t visit today, but he’s okay.”

“What about you?” Edward asked. “Are you okay?”

His mother didn’t answer. She had caught onto his idea of tracing shapes onto the table.

“Mother,” Edward said, “I didn’t shoot Mr. Burgess. It was an accident. You know that, right?”

She only nodded.

“Were you close with him?” Edward asked again.

“We were friends at one point.” She held the bridge of her nose and breathed through her mouth for a few seconds, which Edward assumed was from some lasting trauma from the smoke inhalation. After a few seconds, she finished and blew out in front of her, making dust from the table fly up. “But that was a long time ago. Back when gangsters didn’t run this city.”

“It must be hard to see it go to hell like this.”

“I’m proud of you for fighting for it,” she said, looking straight at him for half a second. When she did, Edward saw a glint of moisture in her eye. “But this is where it got you.”

Edward shook his head, unrolling his fingers from a fist. “I don’t want to stop fighting.”

“I don’t have anyone anymore,” she said, her fingers around the phone shaking. “Everything I own�"my house�"it’s all gone. You’ve risked everything to do what’s good, and I’ve been collecting money from the Spartans.”

“You have?” Anger rose up inside Edward for a split second, but it was extinguished the moment she brought a hand up to wipe a tear from her eye. Embarrassment kept the redness in his face, and his eyes went back down to the table. His index finger traced part of a triangle in the corner.

“They pay people to store drugs and guns in their houses. I can’t get a job. It’s the only way I buy food now. My keeping myself alive is hurting the city, and I’m sorry for that. Edward, you’ll be okay, won’t you?”

He sighed, shutting his eyes to drown out the setting and the static coming from the phones. He was trying hard to pretend he was at home having this conversation with her. He’d been waiting years for it, but the prison uniform he was in took so much out of it. “I will be.”

She nodded and hung the phone back on the wall. Edward didn’t move as she stood and a stone-faced guard helped her out the door.

“You have another visitor,” said the guard upon coming back inside, nodding at the other person coming in through the doorway. Edward didn’t understand what he said, but it wasn’t important. As soon as he saw Fay coming in through the hall, blood pounded in his ears.

Fay grinned at the guard and put a hand on his cheek. “Give us some privacy, won’t you?”

The guard grunted in affirmation and went out the way she came. Edward couldn’t see much from his cubicle, but he heard the door shutting and being locked. Fay was in her black jacket and entered Edward’s vision in such a way that the Spartans’ symbol was the first thing that he saw. Rows of piercings lined her ears and nose, and the side of her head had been shaved, putting the fading scars running down her face on full display. One of them split the butterfly tattoo over her eye in two. Still, under all of the histrionics, she was still that girl that Edward grew up with. That whining, teary shine in her eye that grovelled for the drugs in his hand was still there like an image imprinted into a screen.

She sat down on the chair on the other side of the glass and picked up the phone. Edward forgot that he was still holding the phone on his side up to his face. He felt so numb that he couldn’t let go of it. Fay bared her incisors in a smirk and tapped on the glass with the knuckles of her other hand as if she were trying to get the attention of a zoo animal. “It’s been a while.”

“I don’t know how many times I need to tell you,” he said, letting the words shoot from his throat. “I didn’t shoot your father.”

He was just met with a tiny, upward curl of her lip that filled him up with venom. Her voice was filled with so much glee that it almost sounded like singing. “Are you still going with that story? You’re a lawyer, Ed. You know the kinds of lies the convicted tell to save themselves. Yours sounds pretty contrived.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Even if it was, do you think my dad would have been shot point-blank if you hadn’t invaded my house and started a fight?”

He didn’t answer. It was something that he’d thought about, but he could never keep his train of thought on track for more than a few minutes.

She continued, tapping her heels on the floor, “When it was me on the other side of the glass, I was told you wanted to see me and I refused, so I assumed you’d say the same. That’s why my visit had to be a surprise. How does it feel, Ed? I mean, obviously I know how it feels to be behind bars, but I don’t know how it feels to ride high for so long on the pain of others and finally get brought down to their level. Must be humbling, right?”

“Why don’t you confess to what you did?” Edward said, unable to stop himself from spitting onto the table in front of him. “Why surround yourself with criminals and murderers? What good does it do you?”

“Look at yourself, Ed. You’re still trying to be in control of things that don’t need you. You haven’t changed a bit.” Fay sighed, no longer holding back the glee she felt. Sitting in front of her was the man who had ruined her life in a prison uniform behind a dirty glass panel. She was ecstatic. “Remember when you left me? My parents left to go care for some sick aunt right after and just forgot to come back. Then, I lost the only job I had. With no one to help me and no one to tell me that it was going to be alright, I decided to go try some antidepressants, except they weren’t antidepressants at all. That’s how I came into the Spartans, if you wanted to know. I wasn’t aware about their novelty gang-owned drug stores.

“Then, you came back. Do you know what it was like in rehab without my drugs? It felt like a hundred screwdrivers hovering around me all the time, chipping away at my bones. I tried to kill myself plenty of times, but it’s hard to do it while strapped to a bed. What does it feel like for you? I mean, even if you get out on parole, no one’s going to hire a lawyer who gunned down an old man. You’ll be lucky to get a career at the Southside diner. So how does it feel?”

Edward didn’t respond, which almost made Fay burst out laughing. The temperamental little kid was trying so hard to look scary; eyebrows pointed, teeth bared.

“Come on, Ed. The Spartans have been in the game since before we were born. For longer than you can bring yourself to acknowledge, the Spartans have been the masters of this city, but you were our scourge. You were the beacon of hope for everyone that the Spartans couldn’t do whatever they wanted and that we could be beaten. Now, you have a murder on your record because of us and you’re going to prison on the orders of a judge that we bought off. It was fun while it lasted, at least.”

“If you’ve come here to rub that in my face,” Edward said, “You’ve made your point.”

Fay snickered through her nose from his chagrin, smugly stroking her hair back in a way that made Edward want to rip her hand off. “That is one of the reasons I’m here. But not the reason. See, I have power now, and Pluto gave me permission to do whatever I want to you before he kills you himself�"tenderize the meat, he said. What do I want to do to you? I want to make you feel as helpless and as alone as I did when you abandoned me, and I don’t think that prison is going to do that to you. Instead, imagine yourself wandering the streets with the law enforcement you love so much hunting you down. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it?”

Edward’s fist came down on the table with a thud that shook the glass. All it did was make Fay inch backwards a microscopic distance. She wasn’t going to let him ruin her joy.

“So, at twelve o’clock in the afternoon tomorrow, two guards will come to you and bring you to a cop car for a prison transfer. One of their names will be Randall. Those guards are on our payroll, and they’re going to dump you on the outskirts of the city before shooting themselves in the head. Then, you’ll be free to make whatever moves you want to make at me.”

“And if I don’t go with them?”

“Then you’ll be locked in prison with a bunch of inmates that have been instructed to kill you and guards that have been paid not to care. Also�"and I’m proud of this part�"if you’re not at her place an hour after twelve to stop him, Aries is going to put a bullet in your mom’s head. Are the rules clear?”

“Let’s talk about you,” Edward snarled. His heart was beating on his ribcage. Fay took her hands off the table and glared at the space between his eyes, ready to let anything he said reflect off of herself. “Your father abandoned you just when your life was going to hell and had only been in town for a month before he died. I looked at his records. Admit it�"you don’t give a s**t about him. What you care about is me. You didn’t hesitate to blame me for this. You jumped at the opportunity to rekindle your hatred for me because without me in your life to drive you, you have nothing to do but stuff drugs down your throat and pray that it’ll make everyone afraid of you. You wanted me back in your life because without me and a gang to hide behind, you’re nothing.”

“Nothing?” Fay laughed, bringing a finger to the surface of the glass as if to break through and shove it down his throat. “Who’s sitting on which side of the glass?”

“I researched you, Fay. I’m sitting here because of my choice to do what’s right. What do you have that you worked for? Did you work for your membership in the gang? No, all you did was get high enough to walk around town until Aries picked you up off the street. You were gifted all of your power, but you don’t deserve any of it. If you only got what you actually earned, you’d probably be overdosed in the street with no one that cares enough to find your body.”

“You’ve always thought you were so much better than me,” she said right back, leaning back into her chair. “I can’t wait to continue this game once you’re outside.”

She stood up and left the room. The twitching of his fingers forced Edward to look down at the tabletop in front of him. Without the permission of his mind, they had spelled out FAY in capital letters in the dusty corner. He brought his fist down onto it hard enough to shake the floor and let blood spread from his knuckles under his flesh.