“Please,” Mom said. “He’s in serious trouble this time, and I don’t know how to help him. I work in a nursing home. You’re a student at Harvard Law. I need your help.”
“Of course, Mom. Just tell me what time. I’ll be waiting outside my dorm.”
3
It was still dark out with freezing rain when the old Toyota pulled up in front of the dorm the next morning. Madison got in and pecked Mom on the cheek. She’d been up late reading for class, working on a moot court brief, and—most exciting—applying to the judicial internship in Conroy’s chambers. Her eyes were tired and scratchy, but her mother looked more exhausted than she felt. And older than she had just weeks ago, with new threads of silver in her hair and deep purple shadows under her eyes.
Danny’s fault, as usual.
“I got you a coffee,” Mom said.
There was a Dunkin’ sitting in the cup holder.
“Thanks.”
Madison took a sip and put it back down. Light and cloyingly sweet, the way she liked it when she was a kid. Her dad died when she was thirteen and Danny ten. Mom was frozen in that moment and still treated them like she did back then. Which meant indulging and enabling Danny. And expecting Madison to drop everything to take care of her little brother.
“Can you find this place in Google? The goddamn thing won’t talk.”
The facility where Danny was being held was all the way in Rhode Island, in some crappy little town just over the Mass. border. Madison took her mother’s phone and typed the name into Google Maps.
“Take Mem Drive, get on 90, and then I’ll tell you from there. It’s saying an hour and twenty-six minutes with the traffic.”
“Jeez, we’ll be the last ones in line,” Mom said.
The drive was harrowing on the slick roads in her mother’s little car, with its broken heater and smell of gasoline. The parking lot near the prison was full by the time they arrived. Her mother circled, looking for a spot, face tight with anxiety. They left their handbags in the trunk and locked it. You weren’t allowed to bring anything into the facility except your ID and a single car key—not your phone, not an extra Tampax, not even a stick of chewing gum. The hulking concrete prison loomed over the street, surrounded by a tall metal fence topped with coils of deadly looking barbed wire. As her gaze traveled up the grim facade, Madison felt sick. No matter how mad she was at Danny, he was still her goofball kid brother, a string bean with big ears and an infectious laugh. Young and foolish, but never mean; certainly not evil. And not beyond redemption. No matter what he’d done—and if she was honest with herself, there was some chance the charges were true—she couldn’t stand to think of him locked up in this god-awful place.
The line of visitors stretched down the block, around the corner, huddled in winter coats, some of them holding newspapers over their heads because you couldn’t bring in an umbrella. It took them forty-five minutes to make it to the entrance, by which point Madison’s boots were saturated, and her puffer jacket and jeans soaked. The lobby looked like something out of a gulag. Harsh lighting, cinder block walls, scuffed linoleum floors streaked with muddy water. The smell of wet clothing was everywhere. The buckles on Madison’s boots set off the metal detector, and a female CO patted her down roughly before waving her on to the next CO, who was checking IDs.
“Yolanda and Madison Rivera. Here to see Daniel Rivera. My son,” Mom said, handing over their driver’s licenses.
She recited Danny’s inmate number from memory. The corrections officer checked the number in the computer, and waved them through to the visiting room. The cavernous space was filled with screaming babies and sobbing girlfriends. Guards stationed at intervals along the wall scanned the crowd, alert for any physical contact or other violation of the rules. Madison and her mother sat down at a table to wait. Every few minutes, an air horn would blow, followed by the sound of a lock disengaging with a heavy clank of metal. An inmate would then shuffle in, chains rattling, clutching a manila folder in his manacled hands, escorted by a CO.
About ten minutes later, that inmate was Danny, and she had to stifle a cry of dismay. He walked toward them stiffly, like he was in pain. The guard uncuffed him, and her mother threw her arms around him. He towered over her, coltish and lanky, just a kid embarrassed by his mother’s emotional embrace. The other inmates could see from the way Yolanda’s shoulders shook that she was sobbing.
“That’s enough, ma’am,” the corrections officer said. “You need to limit physical contact, or the visit will be terminated.”