Phoenix Flame - Sara Holland Page 0,19

years I’m still going to see Mom at Sterling Correctional Center. He doesn’t understand why I’d even want to—after all, he thinks she’s the one who killed Nate. But he’s never tried to stop me or talk me out of it. He’s respected my choice. And now …

Unexpectedly, a gust of emotion hits me and my eyes fill with tears. Dad doesn’t know why it’s more important than ever that I talk to Mom. He doesn’t know about Solaria or the soul trade. And yet, somehow, whether through sheer luck or some kind of fatherly intuition, he still came through for me right when I needed it most. Overcome, I wrap my arms around him in another tight hug, one that he’s not expecting judging by the oof he emits.

“Thank you, Dad,” I whisper, letting myself feel hopeful for the first time since the meeting in Havenfall’s kitchen. “Thank you so much.”

5

Sterling Women’s Correctional Facility is familiar in the worst way. I have been here so many times for so many years, and yet it never changes. The parking lot feels as flat and endless as purgatory. The guards at the gate all wear the same mirrored sunglasses that hide their faces and show you yours instead, small and warped and scared when you drive through the checkpoint. The barbed wire along the top of the fence curls high and even, stretching as far as I can see. Everything is gray—the ground, the walls, the uniforms—and rather than making the blue of the sky pop, all that gray seems to leach the color out of it, like the earth is infecting the heavens, or feeding off it. This place is enough to make you forget that magic exists. Enough to scrub all the individuality out of you. Here, I’m just another inmate’s kid, scared and lost and desperate.

A dark thought pops into my head. If Mom’s sentence is carried out, will they take her somewhere else or kill her here? I suppress a shiver. I haven’t been checking my emails to see if there are any updates from Mom’s public defender about her death sentence. The last few years have been a depressing parade of appeals and reprieves and all sorts of administrative hoops in the public defender’s attempts to give my mom more time. But it’s almost scarier not to know what will happen next; to have the ax hovering overhead, but not know when it will fall.

The motions to enter the prison are rote for me now. After all these years, I bet I could do them in my sleep. Go inside into a barren entryway where everything is concrete or metal. Stand there awkwardly while a bored-looking guard with chapped, bitten lips paws through my backpack, then calls over a female guard to do the same to my person. I stand still, try not to act tense or worried—though I’m very aware of my body, the tightness in my shoulders, how weird my hands feel hanging limp at my sides—and wait for it to be over, having learned long ago that any attempts at small talk would only result in an annoyed look and stony silence. The guards are efficient, but a place like this must burn any kindness out of you.

Eventually it’s over and I’m escorted to the visiting area. Just a long, off-white counter bolted against a wall of scratched, clouded plexiglass, with plastic dividers separating each slot and metal stools similarly bolted to the floor.

I settle down on the uncomfortable seat. Mom’s not here yet, so there’s nothing to look at but the faint shape of my reflection in the plexiglass, like a ghost emerging from the bare cinderblock. I search my reflection for the difference that Dad saw in me earlier. So much has happened since the last time I came here. But I just look pallid and sickly and small, same as always, same as everyone here.

A few minutes later, Mom emerges from the back door that leads to the cell blocks, and for a moment our reflections line up and overlap in the glass. Beyond the limp braid and haggard stress lines, she looks like me. Has my sharp chin and round eyes. One brown, like mine, and one green. She’s my mom. My heart jumps, and this, too, is familiar. The moment of hope when everything else falls away and for a moment I forget about the plexiglass, I forget where I am, because my mom is in front of