There are days in life that a person never sees coming. Sometimes, those are good days, but other times they’re not so good. Occasionally, they might even be surreal. For Faith McLemore, today was a very surreal day.
As she stood at the end of the long concrete pathway leading into the ominous brick building, she tried to assess how her life had gotten here.
Now almost in her mid-twenties, she expected to be at a totally different place. Traveling the world, working in fashion or maybe even politics, dating a handsome man with a strong jaw and even stronger work ethic. She certainly expected to have a big rock on her left hand by now, just like most of her other high society friends did. Even Eileen Lawrence, the most homely girl in her circle of wealthy friends, was engaged, albeit to an equally homely man. But he had money, lots of it, and that always made men more attractive.
Instead, she found herself in a very different stage of life - standing in front of this building, single, jobless and going in for a meeting she never expected to have. Yes, her life had definitely gone off the rails in recent months.
The death of her mother, Jane, had started the whole chain reaction of her life spiraling out of control. The sudden car accident that had claimed her mother’s life rocked her world, but also her father’s. He still hadn’t recovered, and then he’d made his own poor choices in the years following that dreadful time.
As she approached the glass doors leading into the building, she steeled herself. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe her visions of what this meeting would be like would be far off the mark. But as soon as she opened the door, she knew. The smells, the sounds, the energy of this place was unmistakable and worse than the nightmares she’d been having lately.
“Can I help you?” the woman behind the glass enclosed cubicle asked. Her face was impassable, and it seemed if she cracked a smile that her skin might actually split open.
“I’m here to see Jim McLemore,” Faith said softly as she looked around her. It was like a foreign country, the dull roar of sounds she didn’t recognize and voices she couldn’t decipher. She pulled her expensive handbag closer to her body.
Sometimes she thought maybe she’d been too spoiled in her life. Her father and mother had made sure she had all the best. A big house, a pony as a kid, more family vacations than she could count, a brand new car when she turned sixteen. But that life was long gone, even though she refused to get rid of her expensive handbag. It was one of the only things she still had.
“Inmate number?” the woman practically shouted.
Inmate. Her father was now an inmate. Faith slid a small piece of paper through the window with the number written on it. The woman looked at it without speaking and printed a sticker.
“Put this on and go through that door. Take a seat.”
Suddenly she feared the woman might slap an orange jumpsuit on her as soon as she crossed the threshold. There was something about being in an actual prison building that made her throat constrict a bit, and she wondered how her father was managing to put one foot in front of the other each day.
He’d only been there for two months now, but it seemed like an eternity. Aside from missing him desperately, Faith had lost the only home she’d ever known when the government had seized it as part of her father’s assets. They’d taken just about everything at this point which was why she held her designer handbag so close. Well, that and the fact that she was well aware that criminals surrounded her at the moment.
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