“Yes, Rusty is going.” Renee wasn’t going to repeat her there are no princes words. Not with Tessie’s worries. If the girl needed to trust her prince in order to face her father, Renee was going to keep her mouth shut about it. There would be time later to help her daughter face her fantasies. Today all Tessie needed to do was see the man whose genes she carried.
“I’ll get up now,” Tessie said.
“I’m glad,” Renee said as she sat on the edge of the bed, too. “What do you want to wear today?”
Tessie smiled. “I want to show my daddy my angel wings. He doesn’t know angels can fly away.”
“I’m not sure—” Renee said, trying to think of the best answer. Her ex-husband wasn’t the kind to coo over something like that. “They don’t allow everything into the prison where your daddy is staying.”
“They let angel wings everywhere,” Tessie said as she spread her arms and walked out of the room.
Please, God, she prayed, let that be true.
The girl went into her room and put on her red sparkling dress and her angel wings.
Renee wondered if she should call the sheriff. The lawman would know if there was any chance of taking Tessie’s angel wings into the visitors’ room. Although when she thought about it, there was no metal on the wings. Cotton balls and gold glitter decorated the edge of them, but the rest was just cardboard painted white.
Given the festive glamour of Tessie’s clothes, Renee decided to wear her denim jeans and an old blue sweater. She didn’t want her ex-husband to think this was a Christmas celebration of some kind and that they were hoping for a greeting-card moment.
By the time she had strapped Tessie into her booster seat and tucked the angel wings behind the driver’s seat, Rusty was there and climbing into the passenger’s side. They pulled out of the Elkton place at seven o’clock. It felt like five.
Renee had packed a thermos of coffee and another one of juice. She had bananas and apples for snacking. They were packing light, she thought, considering that Tessie had wanted to bring Dog with them.
As much as Renee would like to greet her ex-husband with a wolf at her side, she figured Dog wouldn’t enjoy the trip. Besides, she wasn’t sure that the animal wouldn’t be banned as a weapon.
Truthfully, all she wanted was to slip in and get her ex-husband to sign the custody papers for Tessie and have him say a couple of insincere words to their daughter then let them leave in peace.
There had been some snow on the gravel roads when they left the Elkton ranch, but when they got to the freeway, it was clear. The road was still frozen and had a scraped look, but there wasn’t any snow. As the sun rose, the day warmed. The sky was light blue and there was no frost on the windshield.
“You don’t need us with you when you talk to my ex, do you?” Renee asked Rusty. She’d forgotten for a while there was more to this trip than just herself and Tessie.
“No, I think he’d talk better if we were alone,” Rusty said. “Unless he refuses to talk to me without you there.”
“I doubt that,” Renee said. Her ex didn’t value her opinion. “Unless of course he just wants to make things difficult for me.”
It was silent for a moment.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me about him,” Rusty finally said. “Anything that might help me get him to talk?”
“Like what?”
“What kind of sports he likes, political hot buttons, hobbies?” Rusty said. “Something that will help me put him at ease. Make him feel he’s talking to a buddy. Maybe his first name. I notice you never use it.”
“His name is Denny,” Renee said curtly. “And I don’t use his name because—well, I just don’t. He’s my ex and that’s all. Except for being Tessie’s daddy.”
“Well, that’s a start.”
Renee noticed the tension in her hands as she gripped the wheel. Talking about her ex-husband made her nervous.
“He also liked football,” Renee continued, forcing herself to go on. “I don’t know if he still does. He used to have the car radio tuned to country music—when we had a radio that worked, anyway. He liked to chew gum. Spearmint, mostly.”
“Okay,” Rusty nodded. “Regular kind of guy.”
“If you call robbing banks regular,” Renee said with some punch behind her words.
“Of course not,” Rusty answered back testily. “I’m not soft on crime, either, just in case you are wondering. I don’t approve of what my brother has done so far. And I certainly want the man who’s threatening him caught and sent to jail.”
Tessie hiccuped in the backseat and that was all Renee needed. Her daughter did that when she started getting scared. Renee didn’t know what caused it physically—maybe a lack of air—but she needed to turn this around. She might not like this conversation, but she hated that Tessie might be worried.
“I’m sorry,” Rusty said then, his voice low and distressed. “That was uncalled for—”
Renee was speechless. The other times Tessie had hiccuped like that, she and her ex-husband had been squabbling. She had always been the one to stop it. To apologize. To accept the blame. To promise never to do it again.
“I—” She started. Maybe she would learn something about herself by talking about her past. “It’s my fault, too.”
“It’s a hard day for us all,” Rusty agreed. “We’ll just call it even.”
Renee spared a quick glance over to make sure he looked sincere. He did.
“I usually—” She turned her eyes back to the road. It was only in the past year that she had done any of this kind of thinking. “Have you been talking with Pastor Curtis?”
“No.” He shook his head. “My chaplain.”
“Aah,” she said.
He smiled then. “I used to apologize before I knew it was good for the soul, too. I was born knowing I made mistakes. My mother reminded me.”
Renee considered that. “There’s a difference between knowing you’ve made a mistake and openly apologizing for it.”
Rusty nodded. “There’s a difference between a small mistake and a large one, too. Some things are too big for apologies.”
His voice was quiet and Renee could almost feel the pain of his words. She didn’t know what he meant, though.
“Jesus didn’t think so,” she finally said. “He forgave everything.”
“Jesus never made a mistake that got his whole platoon killed,” Rusty said, and the words hung in the air between them. “He never left his brother in the care of an abusive old man. He never disappointed his mother so badly she left.”
The bitterness of his grief was almost too much.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
Rusty gave a curt nod. “I’m working through it. That chaplain I know is one persistent guy.”
“Good,” she said softly. “That’s good.”
They passed the next hour in silence, but Renee decided the quiet was important for both of them. She certainly had things to sort through. The anger she felt for her ex-husband—that would be Denny, she made a point of saying to herself—had not lessened. When had she stopped using his name, as though he was less of a person?
She looked in her rearview mirror. Tessie was sleeping in her booster seat, the tip of her wing showing by her black shoe and her red dress sparkling in the sun that came in the side window. Renee wondered if her feelings toward Denny had made Tessie more afraid of the man. Maybe she had been part of the reason for her daughter’s fantasies. She didn’t remember Denny ever showing affection to their daughter, but maybe Tessie had tapped into her mother’s rage and built her conflicted fantasies from that. Renee knew she smiled sometimes when the subject of Tessie’s father came up even though she was seething inside.
No, Renee told herself suddenly, she wasn’t going to be the fall guy
in this. Any man who hit his child did not have the right to be forgiven.
She looked over at Rusty. She had told him nothing was unforgivable. Had she been wrong? She had no inclination to absolve her ex-husband. Rusty seemed tormented by as many questions as she was.
* * *
Rusty could see the Deer Lodge prison from a distance as they turned off the freeway next to the small town. A squared-off two-story building in a light gray color with rows of windows on all sides squatted on the open land like the cement box it was. The dirt road that went to the main gate was plowed and had no snow on it. The ground was frozen. A wire fence surrounded everything and tall spotlights rose in even spaces, their shining metal heads pointing down at the prison grounds.
They had stopped to buy gas for the pickup an hour earlier and Rusty had gone inside the station and bought an assortment of candy bars and lots of spearmint gum. He didn’t feel any more prepared to meet Denny Hampton than he had been yesterday. He had never laid eyes on the man and already he despised him. If he let that show, though, all chance of getting him to talk would be gone.
Renee drove through the gate into the parking area for visitors. After she parked, she turned to Rusty.
“Are we doing the right thing?” she asked.
He had been reaching for the handle to open his door, but he stopped and looked at her. “Nervous?”
She nodded.
“I can take the custody papers in for you if you want,” Rusty offered.
She shook her head. “I don’t think he’d sign them. I’m not even sure he’ll sign them if I give them to him, but I’m sure he won’t sign for anyone else. He’ll want to make me suffer first by pretending he won’t sign. Trying to get me to beg. Having some fun at my expense.”
“Sounds like a prince of a guy,” Rusty said, forgetting Tessie was in the backseat.
“No, you’re the prince,” Tessie said, leaning toward the front seat. “Not my daddy.”
Rusty turned around. “Do you still want to see your father?”
“Remember you have three choices,” Renee added as she looked at her daughter.
The girl looked serious.
“I want to see my daddy myself,” Tessie finally said, nothing of fairy-tale endings in her voice. She looked as if she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. But she needed to face the man.
Rusty decided not to make them look like a family when they left the pickup. It would be easier for all that way, he thought. But when the sidewalk to the entrance was slick, he gave one arm to Renee to hold on to. He’d already picked up Tessie when she’d wobbled in the wind with her wings.
They made an odd sight, he was sure, but he suddenly wished he had a picture of them making their way to those old metal doors anyway.
It wasn’t until they opened the doors to go inside that Rusty made a decision. The tension in all of them was out of control.
“Do you think there’s someplace where we can pray?” he asked Renee. “Well, more you praying and me agreeing, but you know what I mean.”
She smiled up at him. “I’d like to find a quiet room. I put our trip on the prayer chain at church yesterday. Telling people that we were looking for answers and going to talk to my ex-husband.”
Rusty felt a moment’s unease. “Did you mention me? That I was looking for these answers, too?”
Renee nodded. “I guess. I mean, I didn’t say much. Just that the three of us were going and then the answers bit.”
“Who gets the prayer requests?” Rusty asked, telling himself he was worrying needlessly. The sheriff had mentioned that the rustlers might put pressure on Renee’s ex-husband if he had some information they thought he might spill. The prayer requests probably only went to three old ladies who talked everything over while they had their tea.
“Everybody,” Renee said with a shrug. “There’s an internet loop. Anyone who wants can get the messages.”
By that time, Renee had found a small waiting room that was empty. She led them all inside. The walls were painted a light mauve and the chairs were upholstered with an old navy vinyl. A bouquet of yellow plastic flowers sat on a scarred coffee table beside a stack of old magazines.
“I don’t know how long this room will be ours,” she said as she sat down on one of the chairs. “So we’ll pray fast.”
Rusty sat down, setting Tessie in her own chair. Then they all joined hands and bowed their heads.
Rusty nodded every time Renee asked for guidance or wisdom. He knew he didn’t really qualify as someone who should pray since he wasn’t sure about God’s forgiveness yet, but the chaplain had encouraged him to act beyond what he believed when it came to prayer. The important thing, the man said, was that Rusty believed God was listening. Then he added that maybe that wasn’t even necessary. Maybe it was nothing more than a man bringing his concerns to God and trusting Him to take care of them.
Everything in him that was protective rose up when Tessie asked Jesus to help her talk to her daddy. He even prayed for that one himself, telling God he would appreciate the girl’s request being answered.
It wasn’t long after they prayed that the three of them were standing in a hallway, waiting to be searched. The angel wings caused some eyebrows to rise and some lips to curve, but they were permitted. Then a guard escorted them into the large beige visitors’ room. The inmates were able to sit at a table with a plastic window between them and their guests.
The sheriff had done a good job with his arrangements, because all three of them were scheduled to see Denny Hampton.
Rusty was surprised by his first view of the man. He was shorter than Rusty thought he would be. And he had red hair, or maybe it was dark auburn. The orange jumpsuit made his skin look green. His face was drawn and he squinted as he watched Rusty, Renee and Tessie walk over to the table.
Rusty had thought about putting Tessie down. She’d put her wings on her back and it blocked some of Rusty’s vision. But the girl clung to him until he only tightened his hold on her.
“You couldn’t wait, could you?” Denny snarled as he leaned back, looking from Renee to Rusty. He didn’t even glance at Tessie.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Renee stammered.
“I doubt that,” Denny said with a sneer on his face. “I’d guess it’s a whole lot more than it looks like. What’s the matter? Did you get a little lonely at night?”
“I spend my time with our daughter,” Renee said, her voice gaining some strength as she sat down in front of the plastic window. “I brought you papers to sign so that Tessie is taken care of if something should happen.”
Renee slipped the documents through the slit under the plastic.
Rusty took a position behind her, Tessie with an arm around Rusty’s neck as she twisted around to look at her father, her wings flapping a little as she did. She had a gingerbread cookie in her hand.
Denny didn’t even glance at the papers.
The man stared at Rusty instead. “Who’s that you got with you?”
Rusty tightened his hold on Tessie. The girl was trembling.
“It’s me, Daddy,” she said, her voice shimmering with hope. “Your princess.”
Denny Hampton started to laugh and it had a mean sound to it.
“I don’t have a princess,” he finally managed to say.
Rusty put his hand on Tessie’s back as though he could shield her from the man.
“What you have is a daughter,” Renee said then, her voice rising in volume until she was almost shouting. “So sign those papers.”
Denny put back his head and grinned. “I see you finally got some spunk to you. It’s about time.”
Renee stood up then and, if it were possible, Rusty had no doubt she would have leaped over the partition separating her from her ex-husband.
“You’re a vil
e, evil man!” she said through gritted teeth.
Denny looked taken back and a little afraid. Rusty noticed the prisoner looked over his shoulder at the guard in the back of the room, as though he needed reassurance.
“You can’t talk to me that way,” he said in protest, his voice drawn out until it became a whine. “I know people.”
“Sign the papers and you can know all the pathetic people you want,” Renee said, her voice cold and forceful. She sat back down in the chair. She clearly didn’t believe him that he knew anyone who could hurt her.
“I don’t have a pen,” Denny said.
Rusty reached into his pocket and held out a ballpoint pen. He’d asked when he went through security if this was allowed in the visitors’ room. The guard had approved it.
“You should read the thing first,” Renee cautioned him. “It’s a legal document.”
“I don’t need to read it,” the man said, his voice flat. “I don’t want anything more to do with the girl. Legal or otherwise.”
“Don’t say that,” Renee said, gentler than she had been. “Someday you might—”
She stopped then and didn’t say any more.
They were all silent for a moment, just looking at each other through the plastic partition.
Finally, Denny bent his head and put his signature on the document. Renee had already told Rusty that she was putting her father down as Tessie’s backup guardian.
When the documents were dated and signed, Denny pushed them back. Renee grabbed them and put them in her purse.
“Thank you,” she said to her ex-husband, her voice exhausted, but no longer as angry. “At least you did the decent thing for once.”
With that, Renee stood up and added, “Someone else wants to talk to you.”
Rusty gave Tessie to her mother. The girl looked frozen in shock. He had seen that same expression on young recruits in the army when their whole world changed.
He leaned over and whispered in the girl’s ear, “It’ll be all right. I promise.”
She looked up him and nodded. Then the first tear rolled down her cheek.
White Christmas in Dry Creek Page 15
