woman tells me to hold again and I hear her shuffling through papers. After a few minutes, she comes back on the line. “No, it was definitely 1947, although we did receive the first request in 1946. Unfortunately, we were full at that time and couldn’t accommodate the request. It says here that on September 3, 1947, we received a phone call from his previous place of incarceration, Gallow’s Hill. It doesn’t give much of an explanation on the paperwork I have access to; it just says an emergency call was placed requesting transfer immediately because of a dangerous, possibly life-threatening event that Gallow’s Hill was unable to handle. He was picked up by us that same day.”
I barely pay attention to what she says after she informed me of his official transfer date, and when she rattles off visitation days and hours, at least I snap to it long enough to scribble those down on the sales ledger next to the phone that’s open to a blank page. When she asks me if I need anything else, I don’t bother answering her; I just hang up the phone.
“I’m guessing by what I heard you found the right prison. Did he die or something? Is that why you look like you’re in shock?” Nolan asks, pulling the ledger across the counter toward him to see what I wrote down.
“He’s still alive and yes, he’s there. Tobias wasn’t transferred nine months before I was born like I thought,” I mumble, going through the woman’s words in my head again, realizing I was right all along with my suspicions, and I feel even more sure of them now than I was five minutes ago.
“Okay, so what does that mean? You don’t think he’s your father now? It was all just suspicion anyway so it’s not like we had any concrete proof,” he reminds me, pushing the ledger back where it was.
“I think we have even better proof now,” I inform him, ripping the page out of the ledger with the visitation times. “He wasn’t transferred in 1946, but an immediate and emergency transfer was called in to Strongfield on the same day I was born. That seems a little bit strange to me. How about you?”
Nolan runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head back and forth slowly. “Yeah, that’s a little too coincidental even for me. I’m assuming you’d like to go on a little road trip, since Strongfield is only an hour away, and if the times on the paper in your hand are visiting hours, that means we still have five hours left today.”
Turning away from the counter, I grab the spare set of my father’s car keys from the hook hanging on the wall. Thankfully, I don’t need to wait for another random bit of luck that my father will emerge from his office, allowing me the opportunity to steal his car keys that are always kept in his desk—or be forced to have Nolan pick the lock and try to come up with a lie about why I need the keys.
Feeling an abnormal burst of happiness and, strangely, not at all uncomfortable with it, I decide to try my hand at being just a little bit nice, tossing the keys to Nolan and informing him that he can drive. It’s the only bit of control I feel comfortable conceding to right now.
When we walk out the front door, I make sure the “Closed Indefinitely” sign is still hanging right in the middle of it. I put it there the first day my father locked himself away and refused to deal with anything, including the running of this prison. After one hour of dealing with annoying, nosy tourists, I wrote the words in big, bold letters and taped the sign prominently to the door. I’m not sure what will happen if the state finds out how long my father has been ignoring the business, since this is a historical building and they fund everything, as well as give us a place to live free of charge. Frankly, I don’t really care.
After I woke up from my accident, every morning my mother would braid my hair, and repeatedly tell me all the facts about the girl I supposedly was, but there was only one I liked to hear: I had a full scholarship waiting for me at a very nice college a few hours away, and that scholarship included room and board, as well as all of