His mother, Lena, stood at the sink with the invitation to Eastfield's Family Table Day on the counter beside her. The event was part of a new program allowing carefully screened prisoners to share a supervised meal with immediate family members. It was supposed to help children maintain relationships with incarcerated parents without the glass partitions and telephone receivers of an ordinary visit.
Lena had read every line of the invitation twice. Visitors would be searched. Personal belongings were restricted. Food would be supplied by the institution. Physical contact was limited to the beginning and end of the meal. Inmates assigned to kitchen service were not permitted to approach visiting families without authorization.
The last sentence had been the one that bothered her.
"Do you think he'll like it?" Micah asked, holding up the drawing.
"Your dad keeps every picture you send." Lena smoothed the corner of the paper. "He's going to love this one."
"I made him a chair at the table. Look."
She looked. Beside the window was a little rectangle with four legs. Micah had drawn the same chair in nearly every picture for two years. Sometimes it was at a birthday party. Sometimes it was beside a Christmas tree. Once he had drawn it at a baseball game, balanced absurdly on top of the bleachers. He had never explained it, and Lena had never asked him to. They both understood.
"Should I write something on the back?" he asked.
"Write what you want him to know."
Micah pressed his pencil so hard that the point broke. He sharpened it and tried again. By the time Lena had packed their identification and checked the car keys, he had written six careful words: YOUR CHAIR IS STILL HERE, DAD.
Isaac Brooks had been in Eastfield for six years. When Micah was three, Isaac had walked into a convenience store with a gun he later admitted was unloaded. He had been desperate, angry, and certain that money would solve the debts piling up around his family. He had threatened the cashier and left with six hundred and forty dollars. The cashier, a college student named Eric Bell, had needed counseling for months afterward. No explanation changed that.
Isaac had pleaded guilty and received an eight-year sentence. From the beginning, he refused to tell his son that he was in prison merely because life had been unfair. He told him he had frightened someone and broken the law, and that being sorry did not erase what he had done. He also told him that people were responsible for what they did next.