Sometimes I don't say anything

I’ve been in this room so many times before that it almost seems like home. There are two rows down the room. One row for us and behind the layer of foggy glass, one row for them. I slouched against the red plastic chair and watched the others. Children, wives, mothers, friends, loan sharks still looking for money. Some of them looked embarrassed to be here, they are ridged and pale ones who look around every few seconds and wrench their sweaty hands.. Clean cloths and jumpiness separate them from the rest of us.
Separate them from people like me, people who visit repeatedly, people here for lifers.
I hear the sound of boots slapping against the gray and white, patchwork linoleum and the loud, echoing sounds of chains clinking together. Two blue clad prison officers escorted one of their worn out charges down to me. He wears the same orange jumper he wears everyday.
They sit him down in front of me. We are only three feet apart but a thick five-inch layer of bulletproof glass separates us making it feel like we were worlds apart. I pick up one of the tan plastic phones hanging up next to my chair..
“Hi,” I say.
Despite the short distance between us static jumps onto the line filling in the silence between words.
“Hi,” he says.
I didn’t have to be here. I never have to be here, but the truth is I have nowhere else to go. I should have been in foster care but I somehow managed to fall through the cracks. Maybe they just didn’t know about me. Didn’t know I was his. Maybe they thought I was dead, maybe they thought he killed me. They think he killed all those other people, why not me?
When they took him away I hid in the small closet that housed both our cloths and cleaning supplies. I had waited two long days with out food, water, or sleep before I came out.  I stayed in the run down apartment that we had dubbed as “home” as long as I could before the landlord found me and threw me out.
Now I live outside of here. Outside of the penitentiary. The guards don’t come to get me, or don’t know or care.
I come during visitor’s hours everyday. Sometimes I don’t say anything; sometimes I just look at him. Prison has worn him down, made him weak and tired. His hair is gray when it was once black; his eyes are dark and shrunken  when they were once bright and full.
Did he do it? That question is always on my mind. Did he do it, would he do it, could he do it?
The static comes back on the phone.
“Hi, dad.” I say.
“Hi, son.” he says.