She glanced at her overweight friend in the passenger seat. This would be the first time she had seen her son in two years and she was bringing Margie. The sun was nearly bordering the horizon, late afternoon. She hoped they would still be able to see him.

Vernon had already felt like an old man when Penelope had first fallen pregnant. Only in his thirties, but back then people had kids young. Married young. There hadn’t been a chance for them really, on account of the war. It took Vernon a long time to feel things again. A lot of tentative steps, a little bird learning to fly. And she’d been patient, waiting for that man. And after Mark was killed it took them—both of them—a long time to want to try again. Burying him one of the worst memories she had. She never returned to it. Never went and visited his grave. The son she’d never met. It was too sad to think about.

When Caleb was born it had been her, alone, in the delivery room. So afraid had she been to fall pregnant, and so scared during the pregnancy that she’d lose this child too, that Vernon had taken a leave of absence a few weeks before she was due. He hadn’t been helpful, though. Not really. But he’d been there. She’d started to depend on him again as she’d grown larger, found it harder to move, to rest. He’d been ready with pillows, with kindness.

She knew now that fathers were invited to be with their wives in that cold, sterile room, and hold their hands and bring them cups of water. But when Caleb had been born it had been her, just her, surrounded by near strangers. Vernon somewhere else, asked to wait outside by the nurses. She had wanted Vernon there. Had felt his absence almost like the room had been sucked out, all wind and moisture from it, nothing at all left. The people in the room, the nurses and doctors, busy with just another task. None would really look at her, not like her husband did. Not that he did so now.

They had changed so much since then, the two of them. Instead of love there was only dependency. How stupid, and childish, to think such things. To think that love was a feeling so fleeting as to be stolen by the years. Love was sacrifice and daily decision and she had made that decision willingly for most of their marriage. It was only recently that she had started, selfishly, to put herself first. And why shouldn’t she? She knew she was as much to blame for all of this as him. Yet this thought arose: and why shouldn’t she?

And what else of it was her fault? What the boy had done? The image of Melissa’s broken face. The shattered bone in the nose. Anger in her guts, welling up. Let him bloody rot in there.

She turned down the driveway to Boodyarn, Margie all the while nattering on about her own kid. Penelope pulled up outside the prison, in front of the administration building. She walked inside, Margie trailing.