Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi. I own the characters Deanie and Stacey.
She shouldn't have been there. Standing up straight, she was no more than three feet small, but she wore her hair up in a small brown bun to give her one extra inch. Her inky brown eyes dilated to the size of Reese's Cups at the sight of everything novel in the room that was plain and stiff at best, but at six years old, it was new and that made it interesting to her. A baseball jersey hung like a dress on her petite frame, bright blue for the Toronto Blue Jays, and underneath the table her legs kicked in black leggings, little jelly sandals covering her miniature feet. All Sean wanted was to see his daughter, but he wasn't at all keen on her seeing him in prison, in the blue jumpsuit with a number on his back, manacles keeping his hands contained. Little girls were supposed to think of their fathers as heroes, comedians, and knights without the armor, not criminals and prisoners. He already knew he had let his wife down, but disappointing his flesh and blood, Deanie Cameron, was a brand new heartbreak that nothing in his life, not any of his years at Degrassi or in Wasaga Beach had prepared him for.
He had discussed it with his wife, how Deanie wouldn't be allowed to come to the jail until Sean was granted physical visits. If in their late twenties, Sean and Stacey found it eerie to be talking through phones with glass between them, they couldn't imagine how strange it would seem to someone who just finished kindergarten. After four months of not smelling her children's shampoo, hearing her excited scream of a giggle, and feeling her soft almost plush skin against him, Sean was chomping at the bit to see his daughter. All he had was a picture of the three of them at her fifth birthday, taken by one of his best friends, Ellie Nash, all smiling behind the home baked double chocolate cake with a white number 5 candle lit in the center and 'Deanie' spelled out in M & M pieces.
Walking between officers, Sean had tried to catch a glimpse of his face in anything reflective he could spot, wanting to look as presentable as he could before seeing the tiny girl. There was a small square of plastic, acting as a window in the door that separated the visitor's area from the rest of the prison and he could make out enough of his messy long locks, curling at the end, and saw the healing cut underneath his left eye.
"There's Daddy!" Deanie's voice echoed throughout the room, a few other children at other tables, most older than her. Sean lit up like the star at the very top of a Christmas tree at the sound of her voice, relieved that she recognized him. She threw her arms over her head and he wished with all his might that he could pick her up in his arms. When she was a toddler and Sean would come home from work, she would run to the door and throw her arms up like that, pleading excitedly for him to take her for an airplane ride. He imagined she still would if he was there at their home.
"Ten minutes. No politics, no business." The guard reminded Sean, uncuffing one of his hands and using the empty manacle to cuff him to the table. Sean barely heard the guard, his focus entirely on Deanie across the small brown table. She was sitting next to her mother, poised gracefully in a simple conservative shift dress in black that Sean always liked on her, even if it made the visit feel even more somber than it already was.
"Hey peanut." He reached his free hand across the table for her, but Deanie jumped up and away from her mother's side to sit right next to her Dad, grabbing what she could of his waist with both hands and burying her face into his chest. Sean lowered his head and took a large whiff of her hair, gripping her with his one arm and holding her tight enough to almost push her into his bones if it was possible. He noticed that she wasn't using the same shampoo, the smell of clean soft baby replaced by something floral.
"Daddy, when are you coming home?" She looked up, letting go of him slowly, and asked with inquisitive eyes. She posed the question just as she would if she was asking him what noise cows made or why couldn't they have marshmallows for dinner.
Sean felt the wind knocked out of him. He looked up at his wife, searching for an answer, but she just closed her eyes and bent her own head down, looking to her bare knees for help. When his exhausted blue eyes found his daughter's face again, she was still staring up at him, waiting and wondering. He didn't mean to, he fought it by biting down on his gums, but it was no use. His eyes began to well up and he sniffled without meaning to.
"Well, Deanie…not for a very long time." He ran his hand over her little hair bun, squeezing the bulb, and then covering his hand over hers on the bench. He had been sentenced to ten years for armed burglary and assault, the latter being an accident, with the opportunity for parole at six years. It was just a one-time thing. He had been walking a narrow path since marrying Stacey Mills at twenty two years old. Along with hers and Ellie's help, he was working full time as a mechanic at a shop he loved with clients he liked, he had a daughter that had him wrapped around his finger, and they had been trying for a second baby for the last two years. Jay had called him in the middle of the night, out of the blue, the two men hadn't even spent any time together since Deanie turned two, but he asked for Sean's help on one job and promised him a large cut of the deal. Stacey was just a makeup artist working in a department store and Sean's job wasn't exactly six figures, they wanted to move out of their apartment in Toronto and buy a house in St. Catherine's or Guelph, somewhere you could raise a family. Sean didn't imagine the whole thing would explode the way that it had. He hadn't entertained the possibility of jail time, let alone serious jail time.
"Daddy has to stay here for a while." Gently, Stacey explained just as she had countless times at home when Deanie would ask her where Sean was.
"You're not going to take me to grade one?" Deanie asked, curious and confused. It prompted Stacey to reach into her small crossbody bag for a photograph. She slid it across the table for Sean. Deanie was in a checkered red dress with a cardboard graduation hat on her head, Ellie crouched down beside her with a huge smile. The picture plus his daughter's question only made his tears fall out of his eyes, his lips joining in to quiver like he was the six year old. He felt like the biggest failure in the entire world in that moment.
"I can't, Deanie." He tried to explain through his shaking mouth.
"Why not?" She pressed. Sean swallowed around the large lump growing in his throat and exhaled loudly, attempting to regain some composure.
"I just can't." Sean forced the words out of his mouth, but the answer wasn't enough to Deanie. She wrinkled her nose upwards and looked over at her mom.
"Deanie, why don't you tell Daddy where Aunt Ellie took you last night?"
Silence fell between the once happy family and all eyes were on Deanie. She pulled her hand out from underneath Sean's and placed it on her lap with her other, fidgeting the two together and trying to figure out on her own why her dad wasn't coming home.
"What did you do, peanut?" Sean tried, looking down and asking her in a patient voice he hadn't used in a while, not since the day before he was arrested and he was asking her to try to go to sleep.
"She took me to see Uncle Jimmy's 'asketball game." Sean wasn't really close with Jimmy, but they knew one another still through Ellie as she had a good relationship with him, most people speculated they were still dealing with romantic feelings for one another. Deanie had never seen a real basketball game before, so seeing one conducted in wheelchairs was utterly fascinating. "And then Grandma Cameron came in and we made cookies." Deanie talked to her hands, not looking up at her parents or anyone else in the room.
"She wanted to bring you some, but it's prohibited." In a whisper, Stacey explained.
"Well, that sounds like a lot of fun. Are you being good for Mom?" His eyes were finally starting to dry, stains from tears shimmering slightly on his cheeks. It was bad enough that his daughter had to see him in his prison blues, but now she had witnessed him crying. Of course, he had cried at her birth, but it wasn't like she had any recollection of that.
Deanie nodded, barely moving her head at all.
"Ellie's been over a lot. She's been great." Stacey owed a lot to the redhead. She could have written the whole family off after Sean's stunt, but she rose to the occasion and helped hold the pieces together. She wasn't foreign to Sean Cameron mishaps and took it upon herself to make sure Deanie was picked up from kindergarten for the remainder of the year and that Stacey could work without having to worry about daycare and babysitters. As far as Stacey was concerned, Ellie Nash was sent by God. "How have you been doing?" Stacey tapped underneath her eye and nodded at Sean's face. He knew she was asking about the cut.
"It's nothing." He mouthed, assuring her with the blue eyes that could still hypnotize her even after everything that had happened. Sean held Deanie's hand again, pulling it over to rest contently on his knee. "I'm starting in the shop here tomorrow." He told her, happy that he would be able to generate some money even if it was the same as chesterfield change. It would be nice to have something stimulating to do besides push ups in his cell, staring at the ceiling, and sitting around outside a few hours a day.
"Daddy, come home." Deanie looked up and only a nanosecond later, the buzzer sounded throughout the room to signal that their ten minutes had finished. "I want you to come home!" She shouted, not understanding the situation. The guard that had led Sean to the table kneeled between him and his daughter to handcuff both his hands again, leading him away by the shoulder. Sean wanted just one more minute, but he knew that asking wouldn't do any good.
"I love you very much, Deanie, you know that, right?" He leaned in to kiss her cheek, but she threw her arms around his neck and tried to pull him towards her for keeps.
"Come home!" She wailed, causing Sean to begin to tear up again as the guard's strength removed from his daughter's reach and was taking him further and further away. The small talk hadn't been enough, he needed more time, he needed to make promises and tell her how important she was to him. He wanted to apologize and explain things better.
Stacey had rushed around the table and gathered Deanie close to her, muffling her cries into her stomach, but Sean could still hear them until he was fully escorted out of the room.
Eight years had passed like a snail moving through a road of molasses, but Sean could still hear his daughter's hysterics. Every time he curled up at night, even when he had the cellmate with sleep apnea who snored like it was a weapon, he could hear Deanie howling in his head. She never came to see him again after that. Stacey would visit every chance she was given, but Deanie would drop to the floor and throw a temper tantrum when asked to come, so Stacey never brought her. She explained it to Sean as being "too hard" for the little girl. She was just fourteen now, her birthday passing a week ago, and Sean was surprised that she hadn't come by. He thought that once she graduated from the single digit ages, she might have been more up to coming, old enough to comprehend more, but she never showed. He asked Ellie about her every time she visited him, which was once in a while, and she always gave him full reports – even things he might not have wanted to know. She never brought pictures though, leaving Sean to only remember his daughter as a teacup sized princess with a major set of lungs.
His first chance at parole had been declined due to fights always breaking out around lunch time and Sean always being caught somewhere in the middle of the chaos. After that, Stacey had shown up and expressed that she wanted a divorce, which she cared about Sean very much but that she needed to move on. He didn't want to, but he gave it to her without much argument. It was the least he could do after messing things up the way he had for them.
He was granted parole now, two years early from his release, and he was just hoping with crossed fingers that it wouldn't be too late. With a large Ziploc bag full of his personal items: an old cell phone, his wallet, twenty four dollars, an expired license, and a half-finished pack of spearmint gum, he left the prison behind and breathed in the gust of June wind with gratitude. Foolishly, he expected to see his Jeep pulled up in front, Stacey behind the wheel and Deanie playing with plastic farm toys in the backseat, but a brand new Eclipse pulled up instead, Ellie sitting in the driver's seat with a flashy smile.
"You're back!" She celebrated out loud, jumping out of the car and rushing around it and throwing herself at Sean. "Man, you need a shave." Right in his ear, she laughed as he folded his arms around her back and hugged her.
"Thanks for picking me up." He had a lot to thank Ellie for and he wanted to make it up to her, he just wasn't sure how.
"No problem. Come on in. It's a bit of a mess." She explained before going to get behind the wheel again. Sean slid into the passenger seat, pulling the belt over his body, and looked over his shoulder at her backseat. There was photography equipment neatly packed away, but not much of a mess to speak of. He remembered how easily his Jeep collected junk especially when Deanie was a newborn. "So, where am I taking you?" She asked, one hand on the wheel as they pulled out of the prison's gates and the other collecting her red hair behind her ear.
"That's a good question." Sean chuckled under his breath. He didn't know where he could go. He wondered silently if his brother would take him in, but he didn't want to be a burden. "22 Tinder Crescent?" He tried, hope in his eyes as they watched Ellie's face.
She squinted before looking over at Sean and apologetically turning the corners of her lips downward.
"They don't live there anymore, Sean." Ellie had helped them move out their boxes and load them in a Uhaul two years ago. "Your things are in storage though. We took them up to Wasaga Beach and most of them are in your parent's basement. You know, they would probably be happy to have you." Ellie found the bright side in an otherwise drab situation. "I would love to have you, but my place is so small and Jimmy's moving in right now, so it's kind of under construction."
"That's okay. I remember you saying that." She had been the last person to pay him a visit. "Where are they now?"
Ellie knew exactly who Sean was referring to, but she chose to ignore the question.
"Are you sure you don't want to try your parents? I can drop you off at Union or we could just drive up there. I don't mind."
"Ellie."
She argued mentally with herself, replaying the conversation she had had with Stacey only days ago, but gave in. Sean was staring intensely at her profile and she felt in her gut that he had a right to know where his ex-wife and daughter were. She hoped that Stacey wouldn't be too upset with her for being honest with him. She could understand both parties' positions and it was hard to be put in the middle. Jimmy had told her that morning to respect Stacey's wishes, but Ellie just couldn't help herself. Her conscience was rooting her to tell Sean.
"They moved over to Yorkdale two years ago. Stacey's managing the cosmetics department at the Holt Renfrew over there." Her stomach twisted a new knot at its pit. "I wanted to tell you, but it didn't feel like my place."
"I understand." Sean said while biting on the tip of his tongue. "Yorkdale's not far." It was much closer than Wasaga.
"Sean, I can't. She has a different life now."
"I think I have a right to see my daughter. She didn't take full custody." Sean was not going to let up and Ellie knew that. He had been stubborn when they were together and that was back before he even had any hair on his chest. She knew that whether or not she brought him to Stacey's house that he was going to find a way there on his own.
"Don't you want some of your stuff? Freshen up before you just waltz on in for the first time in eight years?"
Ellie had a point. She also knew that if she brought Sean to his parents place that he would be occupied with talking to them, or at least his mother, for a while and she could return to her life and out of the drama that Sean's was about to unload.
I'd love to hear some reviews. I just started writing again and this just kind of came to me. I'm excited for the next few chapters.