Brenda Harlen - One Man's Family

“Hey, Ali.” He managed a smile when she rose to give him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek before returning to her seat in accordance with the strictly enforced rules of visitation. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

But she could tell that he was pleased by her visit, grateful for the interruption of his mundane routine.

“I’m on my lunch break so I can’t stay long,” she told him. “But there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Are the kids okay?” he asked, immediately concerned.

“Joey and Lia are fine,” she said quickly, anxious to reassure him even while she recognized the falseness of her assurance.

Of course they weren’t fine—they were going through hell trying to deal with the repercussions of their father being in jail. On the other hand, there wasn’t any kind of medical emergency that she suspected Joe was worried about.

“Okay.” He exhaled shakily. “Good.”

“How about you, Joe?” she asked gently. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” he responded, though not very convincingly.

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Worrying about me in here isn’t going to change anything.”

“I know,” she admitted. “But I can’t help it. And I can’t help feeling guilty for living my life while yours has been put on hold.”

“Joey and Lia are my life, Ali. And because of you, they’re able to move on with their lives. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re there for them.”

“It would mean more to them to have their father with them.”

He winced as the barb struck home. “Dammit, Ali. You know this wasn’t my choice.”

“Then why didn’t you testify, Joe? Why didn’t you take the stand to tell your side of the story?”

“Haven’t we been through this already?”

“Not really, because you always refused to answer the question.”

“Telling my side of the story wouldn’t have changed anything,” he told her. “Not without proof that someone else took those plans.”

“Then that’s what we’re going to find.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked warily.

“I’ve hired a private investigator.”

“Why?”

She was stunned. “Because you shouldn’t be locked up for a crime you didn’t commit.”

“The jury convicted me,” he reminded her.

“Because the jury didn’t have all of the evidence.”

“Let it go, Ali.”

She frowned. “I thought you’d be pleased by this.”

“I’ll be pleased when my sentence is over and I can be home with my family again.”

“Well, hopefully Scott Logan will make that happen sooner rather than later.”

“Who?”

“The investigator I hired on the recommendation of your lawyer,” she told him.

“Jordan gave you his name?”

She nodded. “Because he believes, as I do, that you were wrongly convicted.”

“I can’t afford a private investigator,” Joe said softly.

“Have I asked you for any money?”

“You can’t afford it, either,” he reminded her. “You’ve got your courses to pay for.”

As if she could go to medical school while she was working full-time and caring for her brother’s children. Maybe becoming a doctor was her lifelong dream, but she could hardly pursue her own self-interests while her family was in such turmoil.

“He wants to meet with you,” she said, ignoring his comment.

Joe didn’t say anything.

“Which means that you need to put him on your visitor list.”

“I don’t see what good it will do. I can’t tell him anything that I haven’t already told you.”

“Will you do it anyway?” she asked softly. “Please.”

He sighed. “I’ll do it, but not because I think he’ll actually find anything. Only because you do so much and ask for so little in return.”

She managed a smile. “Thank you.”

She didn’t care about his reasons so long as she got the results she wanted, and she was trusting Scott Logan to get them for her.

Joe felt his cheeks burn with shame as he walked away from the table where Alicia remained sitting. Prison rules required that visitors stay seated while the inmate was returned to his cell. He hated her seeing him like this, locked in a cage, unable to move without a security guard shadowing his every step.

He didn’t need to look back to know that she was watching. She had always watched his back, always stood firm in his corner. She wasn’t just his sister; she was his unwavering champion, and his closest friend.

And every day since this nightmare had started, he’d thanked God that she was on his side. She was the first person he’d called when he was arrested, the one person he’d always been able to count on, the only person he trusted with the children who owned his heart.

That thought brought a pang, sharp and deep, as did every thought of Joey and Lia.

He’d made his own choices, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. But he’d never imagined that he’d be torn away from them like this, or that every minute away from them would tear him up inside. But even if he’d known then what he knew now, he wouldn’t have changed anything. He couldn’t.

He’d done what he’d needed to do to protect them. Yet he wasn’t naive enough to believe the decisions he’d made would leave them unscathed. They were just children, after all. Children who had lived the last five years without their mother and who now, for all intents and purposes, had lost their father, too.

He worried about Joey, his angry and strong-willed son who was balanced on that shaky precipice between childhood and adulthood, a boy in so many ways, a man in too many others. And Lia, his beautiful little princess and the light of his life, who always led with her heart despite the bruises it suffered too frequently and easily.

He swallowed around the tightness in his throat and stared straight ahead in defiance of the tears that burned his eyes, taking comfort, scant though it was, in the knowledge that his children had Alicia and each other.

Joey and Lia might bicker and fight as siblings tended to do, but they would stand together when it mattered. As he and Alicia had always stood together.

Only now they were standing on opposite sides of a prison wall.

As he waited for the door of his cell to open, he forced that thought from his mind.

Because he knew that Alicia couldn’t love Joey and Lia any more if they were her own children and would protect them as if they were her own, he felt some measure of comfort.

He also felt guilt. Because although he’d trusted her with his children, he hadn’t trusted her with the one thing she’d been asking for since his arrest.

The truth.

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