THIRTY-SEVEN

I set Simington’s advice aside for the moment. “You need a new lawyer.”

“No,” Simington said, shaking his head. “I don’t. I’m fine.”

“This kind of information could change your sentence,” I said.

“We already went through that. I did what I did, I’m going to take the punishment, and I’m alright with it.”

He spoke as though he were serving a week-long detention rather than being executed. No matter how I felt about him, that didn’t make sense to me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why are you so comfortable with dying?”

Chair legs scraped the floor on the other side of the room, echoing off the walls. We stared at each other for a few moments. I wasn’t going to say anything until he answered the question.

“You’re a good guy, aren’t you, Noah?” he finally said.

I shrugged, not knowing how to answer.

“No, you are,” he said, smiling. “I can tell. The fact that you’re here, the fact that you found Keene, and the fact that you want justice for what happened to Darcy all tell me that.”

I adjusted how I was sitting in the chair, the seat back suddenly feeling too hard.

“And I know what Carolina’s like,” he continued. “Your mother, I screwed that up, okay? I had a chance to actually have a decent life with her and I shot it all to hell. She was one of the few good things I ever ran across and like always, I fucked it up. She has her faults, but bottom line, she’s a good person. It’s natural that she would’ve passed that on to you.”

That was difficult to hear. I chose to think that my personality traits evolved in a vacuum instead of having been passed down from people I was embarrassed by.

Simington pointed his index finger at his chest. “I’m not a good person. I’ve never been a good person. My parents were not good people, so it came easily for me.”

I wondered about the grandparents I’d never known. “Are they still alive?”

“No, and the world is better for it,” he said. “My old man died when I was fifteen. Shot in the chest during a burglary. And my mother passed on about ten years ago. Heart attack. All the stress of lying and stealing from people finally caught up to her.” He paused. “You are better off never having met them.”

My genetic hit streak continued.

“I have never wanted to be a good person,” he said. “It never occurred to me. I didn’t mind hurting people if it got me what I needed. I was looking out for myself, and fuck the rest of the world.”

He pointed the index finger at me now. “You care that Darcy was killed. Even in here, with the chance to tell you that it matters to me, I can’t. Because it doesn’t. I’m sorry she’s dead, but it doesn’t affect me. If I were on the outside, her death would be about as important to me as the weather.”

I leaned forward, my elbows resting on my knees.

“But when I killed those two men in the desert, I knew I was done,” Simington said. “I’d crossed my own pathetic line. I hated myself for doing it. And I knew I couldn’t change myself. I’m too lazy. There wouldn’t be enough in it for me to do that.” He hesitated, his eyes staring right through me. “I am in the best place for me, headed toward what is the best thing for me. Staying here and accepting my fate is the only good thing I will ever do.”

He spoke with such conviction, I knew his words weren’t a ploy to garner sympathy. He’d arrived at a truth in his life, no matter how brutal it seemed to the outside world. Even with my emotions twisted into an impossible knot, I knew it wasn’t my place to talk him out of it.

“I’m serious, Noah,” he said. “This isn’t your fight. It’s not worth it. You need to stay away from Keene.” I stood. “I appreciate the warning.”

Irritation coiled in his face. “Did you hear anything I said?” “Yeah. I heard it all.”

“Then drop this. All of this. Darcy, me, and Keene. Let it go today.” He stared at me through the window. “Go back to your life. Do the right thing.”

I walked out of San Quentin, but I had no idea what the right thing was.