Chapter 12 - The Road to Blackwood
The headlights of our pickup truck cut through the thick morning fog hanging over the interstate.
It was barely four in the morning, and the world was wrapped in a suffocating, milky twilight.
Beside Jonah in the front passenger seat sat Luke, his face pale and swollen with exhaustion.
We had arrived at Luke’s motel room forty minutes ago, catching him half-dressed and packing his duffel bag in the dark.
Luke hadn't fought.
He hadn't made excuses.
He had simply dropped his bag to the worn carpet and wept until his breath ran out.
“I did it because you were finally smiling again, Jonah,” Luke had pleaded through his tears, sitting on the edge of the unmade motel bed.
“When Dad skipped town after that fire, you looked like a ghost who had forgotten how to breathe.”
“You were still checking on me every night to make sure I wasn't coughing up blood from that high school accident.”
“I knew that if you found out Dad was alive and running from murder charges, you’d spend the rest of your savings trying to hire him lawyers out of some twisted sense of duty.”
“I wanted him dead to you.”
“I needed him to be dead so you could finally buy that house, meet a good woman, and have a life!”
Jonah hadn't struck his brother.
He hadn't even raised his voice.
He had simply stood over Luke, let out a long, shuddering sigh, and said one sentence: “Get in the truck.”
Now, the heavy hum of the diesel engine was the only sound keeping us anchored as the miles rolled beneath the tires.
We were not driving to the airport for our honeymoon flight to Oregon.
We had canceled the tickets from the motel parking lot.
Jonah knew in his marrow that if he flew to the Pacific Northwest with that ghost lingering in a prison hospital, he would never be truly free.
The phantom had to be faced on its own soil.
“How far is the medical facility?” I asked from the back seat, leaning between their headrests.
Luke checked the cracked screen of his phone.
“Twenty miles past the county line.”
“It’s a maximum-security hospice ward attached to the state penitentiary.”
“They only keep prisoners who are too sick to stand trial or finish standard terms.”
Jonah kept both hands locked firmly on the steering wheel, his jaw set in a rigid line.
The rain began to fall in heavy, deliberate sheets against the windshield, the wipers sweeping rhythmically back and forth.
I watched the side of Jonah’s face, tracing the sharp, proud curve of his cheekbone in the dashboard light.
This was not the terrified boy who had sat cross-legged on the floor outside my bathroom door on our wedding night.
This was a man marching into the den of his childhood demon to take back his name.
“Are you sure you want to see him, Jonah?” I asked gently, reaching forward to squeeze his massive shoulder.
Jonah glanced at me in the rearview mirror, his gaze soft with gratitude.
“If I don’t look him in the eye and tell him he has no power over me, he will live in my head until the day I die,” Jonah replied quietly.
“I spent fifteen years believing that being big meant being dangerous.”
“I need to see what a real coward looks like.”
The road curved sharply through a dense forest of pines before opening into a barren valley bordered by double razor-wire fences.
The guard towers of Blackwood Medical Facility loomed through the gray mist like concrete giants.
Floodlights washed the parking lot in an eerie, sickly yellow glare.
Jonah pulled the truck into an empty visitor slot near the intake gate and turned off the ignition.
The engine ticked as it cooled in the damp morning air.
For a moment, all three of us sat in total silence, listening to the rain hammer against the metal roof.
Luke looked down at his hands, his lower lip trembling.
“I don’t know if I can go in there, Jonah,” Luke whispered, his voice barely audible over the storm.
“He’ll just look at me like I’m dirt, the way he always did.”
Jonah reached across the center console and placed his heavy hand on Luke’s neck, pulling his younger brother into a firm, protective embrace.
“You don’t have to prove anything to him, Luke,” Jonah said, his voice deep and comforting.
“You stood up for me in front of Claire’s entire family yesterday.”
“You gave me my life back with that journal.”
“Stay in the truck with the heat on.”
“Claire and I will finish this.”
Luke wiped his eyes with the back of his jacket sleeve and nodded, letting out a breath he had held for a decade.
Jonah turned to me, offering his hand.
“Ready, wife?” he asked, a faint, determined smile touching his lips for the first time all morning.
May you like
I slipped my fingers between his massive ones and squeezed with all the strength in my body.
“Always,” I whispered.
