Danny spoke in a placating tone. “Please, darling. You have to be practical. As much as we both hate it, this is unfair to you.”
“I can decide what’s unfair to me. Thousands of prison wives do it. What’s unfair is that you’re in prison and I’m not.”
He ignored my last statement entirely. It was a moot issue for him. “I’m not suggesting that you can’t decide for yourself, and I have the highest respect for those who stand by their loved ones doing time. I’m only saying that you need to be realistic.” His jaw flexed, and he continued, “And you have to start thinking of me as well.”
I gawked at him, aghast.
When he took my hand again, his was trembling. Danny’s hand never trembles. He has one of the softest hearts I know, but the rest of him is made of steel. “Listen to me, Renee. I can’t do this knowing that your life on the outside is difficult because of your loyalty to me. You may argue that you’re fine, but I know you, dear. And I know me. You have to find someone to take care of you, if not for your sake, then for mine. Someone who will hold you at night when your fears come, someone to laugh with during the day. I can’t be that man.”
“You already are that man!”
He shook his head gently. “We’re not like the rest—you have to begin accepting that. I didn’t surrender myself for you to be alone except for an hour each weekend for the rest of your life.” A tear slipped from his eye and my heart began to break for him.
We’re not like the rest. It was the truth, and I’d long known it. Having decided even before we married to take the fall for my sins, Danny never officially filed our marriage license and other necessary paperwork in Bosnia. In the eyes of the law, we never technically married. He wanted to make it easy for me that way, knowing this time would come. But he couldn’t know then that I would be forever married to him in my heart, regardless of the law.
“I’m strong, Danny,” I said. But I had started to cry with him.
We tenderly spoke for an hour that day at Ironwood, and when it was time to go I clung to him, sobbing, until the guard pulled us apart. The next time was no easier. But as time passed I began to admit my own loneliness to myself.
It took me another three months to accept his reasoning, and then only with the help of my therapist. Danny was only looking out for me, knowing that I really did need someone on the outside. He could not be persuaded otherwise. His need to belong to me was outweighed by his need for me to have constant companionship. Because I really was interested in honoring his needs above my own, I couldn’t dismiss them.
The problem was I still loved Danny and he loved me. Even after finally agreeing to entertain the idea of dating another man, I never worked up the courage or the desire to pursue any other relationship. I would love Danny till the day I died, even if he wasn’t my husband.
I left the city behind me and followed the train of trucks into the scrub-covered hills. The day was overcast or smoggy or both; a thick haze hugged the mountains. I couldn’t shake the feeling that when I emerged on the other side of the mist I would find myself lost. Thinking the radio might help, I turned it on, then off after a few minutes of talk about things that didn’t interest me.
By the time I reached Highway 138 the mist had thickened and I felt downright spooked. The traffic on the two-lane road snaking through the hills was spotty, which was a relief. But the lack of movement on either side made me feel more isolated. And it was quieter. Large limestone outcroppings rose from the ground like ghosts on guard.
A mile and a half later I reached Lone Pine Canyon Road, turned left onto the narrow two-lane road, and headed into no-man’s land. It was called the Angeles National Forest, but the forest was mostly shrubs and dirt here. The road turned, then rose and fell gently, following aboveground power lines.
The cutoff for Basal came suddenly, a few miles farther, announced by a single blue sign that read Basal Institute, with an arrow directed across Lone Pine. I swung my car onto a blacktopped driveway and it was then, driving into tall and ominous-looking trees, that I began to doubt my spontaneous decision to come and make something happen on my own.
I really had no idea what I could accomplish. For all I knew, I would never even reach the prison. There would be a gate and guardhouse long before I reached the actual entrance and, without the necessary paperwork, I would be turned away.
The driveway was long, at least half a mile, descending slowly as it snaked around the hills. The trees grew even taller. The mist was thicker. I rolled forward, alone on the road, breathing shallow.
The mist to my left suddenly thinned, offering me my first view of the valley. I blinked at the sight and veered to the left shoulder. Shoved the car into park. Threw the door open and stood with one foot in the car and the other on the graveled shoulder.
Below me in a large clearing half a mile away lay a fenced compound. In the center of that compound rose a beautiful stone building shaped like a cross. I saw it all in a glance and my pulse thickened.
The only similarity between Basal and Ironwood were the tall fences, three of them running in parallel, set back from the institution. Where Ironwood looked like four huge factory buildings, Basal looked more like an oversized mansion. Or an old sanitarium for the mentally ill. Or a massive cathedral. No guard towers that I could see.
The walls rose high and were topped by a green metal roof that sloped upward to meet a glass dome that allowed light to filter into the area below. Windows every ten or fifteen feet peered out from the cells, but they were tinted, the one-way kind used in some office buildings. There were no bars, only leafy vines that crawled up the walls at each corner.
And then I saw what could pass as guard towers, built into the corners of the building with a clear view of the exterior compound. If so, the guards were out of sight. A green lawn, maybe a hundred yards wide, separated the monolithic structure from the three fences, which alone marked the compound as something other than a uniquely designed resort.
Haze drifted by, thickening to obscure the valley for a few moments before thinning again.
There were no patrol cars driving along the perimeter road, no correctional officers pacing the lawn. A single paved road bordered by a shorter fence stretched between a sally port near the perimeter and what I took to be the front entrance. The sally port was a system consisting of two gates that could not be opened at the same time. Any vehicle coming or leaving would have to pass through the first gate, then wait for it to close behind before being admitted through the second gate—a security measure used at all prisons.
A large fenced parking lot with a pedestrian sally port encompassed thirty or forty cars on the far left side. Otherwise there was no indication that the building was even occupied. Deliveries probably came in from the back, where there would be a third sally port, but I couldn’t see over the building.
For a moment I imagined that Danny’s world had just been filled with a ray of bright hope. Surely this would be a better place than Ironwood. But then the voice from the phone drifted through my mind and the illusion faded.
Danny was somewhere within those walls, cut off from the reality known by the rest of the world. For all I knew they were conducting experiments on the inmates inside. Even if they weren’t, someone was going to kill him.
“Can I help you?”
I spun back and saw that a car with an orange light on its roof had approached without my hearing it. A man dressed in black slacks and a white collared shirt stood at the open passenger door, hand on the frame, looking at me. Inside the car, a driver watched me through the windshield, idly tapping his thumb on the steering wheel. I stared, caught completely off guard.