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less second I get to spend with my father. Jovan didn’t say which cells they were in, but there aren’t that many. There are a few dim light fixtures along the walkway between the cells. They provide just enough light to see inside each of them. It makes sense since the soldiers must have to make rounds. I’ve never spent a full night in here so I don’t know what their procedure is.
    Most of the prisoners are asleep, two to a cell. With most of them under blankets and facing away from me, I can’t figure out who is who. Connor has moved ahead of me and I hear him hiss his brother’s name into one of the cells. The noise wakes the man I’m looking at and he rolls over in his bunk so I can see his face. Not my father. He’s a hard-looking man with two scars running across his face. They pucker one side of his face into a parody of a grin.
    I back away and move on to the next cell, hoping that man keeps quiet and doesn’t wake the rest of them. If they make noise, I won’t even get my precious few minutes.
    There’s a man’s hand reaching out of the last cell on my side, but he’s not making noise. Somehow, I know that’s him and I hurry to the end, keeping my footsteps as light as I can.
    And there he is.
    His face is clean now and there’s no mistaking that he’s the man in every photo I’ve managed to save from my mother’s rages. He’s the man holding the baby version of me in the light of a window, smiling down while a fat baby fist reaches for his face. He’s the one carrying that same baby on his chest and laughing while he harvests in our garden. All the images I have of him collapse into this older, but still smiling, man I see between the bars of his cell.
    “Karas,” he says. His voice is soft, like he’s testing a new word instead of saying my name. His eyes are shiny with tears and the hand that he reaches out of the bars tries to touch my hair.
    That movement breaks me out of my spell and I step back, out of his reach. My father he may be, but I don’t know him and I don’t like to be touched by strangers—or even most people I know.
    “You’re my father. Why are you here?” I ask, coldly. I can’t help that my voice is hard. I didn’t do it on purpose. It just came out that way.
    He pulls his hand back and grips the bars. He looks like I just slapped him. He nods across to the cell where Connor stands talking to Maddix and says, “He made it to the border and they sent him on to me. I heard about your mom.” He stops and his hand opens like he’s offering me something. He swallows so hard I can hear it and says, “I’m so sorry.”
    The lump in my throat from before is back, but this time it’s not a little one. It’s so big it’s choking me and I can’t breathe past it. It feels like it will never let me go and I bend over, trying to stifle a sob squeezing past the lump. When I heave in a breath it feels like I’m breathing in fire.
    Both of his arms reach out as far as they can go and even though I see them coming, I don’t step backward. My feet seem to have a mind of their own and before I know it, I’m pressed up against the bars, choking while my father smooths my hair and tells me everything will be okay.
    Even though everything in me just wants to cry, to hit something and just break down, I can feel the seconds ticking away. I can also hear the other men waking and beginning to stir. There is no time for this.
    The breath I heave in sounds asthmatic and whistles its way inside me, but it doesn’t come back out a sob, even though it still burns inside my chest. When I face my father again, tears have run down his cheeks and into the lines beside his mouth. They’re real tears.
    “We’ve only got a few minutes,” I say, though it sounds garbled.
    Those words seem to hit home and he tries to peer down the hallway and see who’s there. He nods and lets my arm go. When he draws his hand away from my hair, he does so reluctantly, running the long ponytail