Chapter 23

James Ellison, age twenty-four, was waiting outside the female dorm. It was cold. He was pacing back and forth. He was in uniform: his Navy blues. She was always late and always kept him waiting, he mused. He saw her through the glass front door as she came down the stairs inside, finally.

“Hi, sorry, I’m late,” she said.

“No problem, babe. Pizza?” he said.

“Sounds good,” she said. They headed off to the pizza parlor, some four blocks from the dorm, on foot.

They were sitting in a booth waiting on the pizza to be done. “So have you decided about, you know, us?” he said, testing the waters. She nodded.

“The answer is yes, James. But, not until I graduate in June. You okay with that?” she said. He pulled her close to himself and kissed her, hard.

“Thank God,” he said. “And, of course June is okay by me.”

“How about your parents? Should we tell them, I mean tonight?” he said.

She suddenly went pensive on him. “My Dad’s...”

“Yes, I know, your Dad’s in prison. But, your other Dad, your bio Dad?” he said.

“Yes, he’s been more of a dad to me than the one who raised me,” she said.

A psychologist would have been able to explain it, maybe as a self-defense mechanism of sorts. Jenna’s attitude, at least her outward attitude, toward the father that had saved her, had morphed. She now avowed how the man, David Carter, though he had undeniably saved her, was a criminal and deserved his punishment.

The morphing had been a slow process, and one that had been aided and abetted by her bio Dad and her Mother. Their motive, their stated motive between them, had been to get Jenna to lighten up on herself and to dump the seemingly endless melodrama that had been so in evidence during the first year of her Father’s incarceration.

“But, well, never mind I guess we can tell them, mom and dad Ronald,” she said.

“You gonna bother to tell your other dad. I mean I know what you think of him, but...” he said.

“I guess. I do kind of owe him. I mean he did raise me. But, he won’t see me, so I guess it’ll have to be by letter and maybe a photo or two,” she said.

He looked her askance. “Your kinda down on the guy aren’t you?” he said.

“No, not really, but he is kinda something. I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just he’s so, weak or something. I mean, well, I just don’t know.”

“Well, he did kill those bad guys that were trying to mess with you,” he said. “I mean he wasn’t weak then.”

The man who spoke, and was sitting across from her didn’t notice the darkening of her look as he’d said this last.

It was all so long ago now. She could not recall when her opinion of her dad in prison had changed into something bordering on contempt. She was still grateful, even happy, that he had taken the fall for her, but not proud of him, if that would have been the way to say it, she thought. She’d cried her eyes out so many nights about it all, what had happened. Then, one night there were no more tears only a kind of malaise, a kind of emptiness. Then there was James, and she was saved. James understood her. Daddy Ron liked him. Her mother liked him. Daddy David?

Daddy David? Well, he’d never met James, never heard of him. Daddy David was weak, and foolish. Thinking about him now made her want to cry again, but, she couldn’t; there were no more tears only something she couldn’t define. She’d send him the letter. Tell him about James and her wedding plans. There’d be a couple of pics too. That would be enough; she would have done her duty, and she saw it as a duty not an act of love and hope.

Hank Bartlett wasn’t actually stalking her, but he was hoping she’d show up as she usually did at the campus caf. He’d seen her several times and today would be the day he made his move on her, ask her to have a cup of coffee with him. They did have class together, CJ II.

The caf was in an all but out and out uproar. His luck was holding: she’d just walked in. He sidled over to where she was filling a plate with salad fixings; he grabbed a plate and a utensil packet and came up behind her.

“Hey, Jen, how yuh doin’?” he said. She turned to look at him.

“Okay,” she said.

“Mind if I join you for lunch?” he said. She shrugged.

He loaded some greens on his plate and followed her to one of the eight person tables in the middle of the auditorium like cafeteria.

They parked themselves. She didn’t immediately sit however, she headed over to the bank of drink dispensers and coffee urns some little space away from their table. She got herself a cup of coffee and returned to the table sliding in to a seat across from him.

“Hank Bartlett,” he said, identifying himself in case she’d forgotten his name.

She smiled.

“I know your name,” she said. “But, just so you know, I have a boyfriend, a fiancé actually.”

He held up his hands in an “I surrender” mode. “No, no, I understand, a looker like you is sure to have a boyfriend if not several of them. No, I was just lookin’ to have someone to have lunch with.” She snickered.

“Yeah right,” she said. She decided she liked the guy. She knew he was a cop or something. One of the girls in class had told her that much. He was taking Criminal Justice II for that reason; well, to get promoted was what she’d been told.

“You’re an officer? Right?” she said. He let loose a little laugh.

“Kinda, I’m a guard at Wallingford State Penal Institution,” he said. “I’m on leave to take this class. Hope to get promoted, well, after I pass this class.”