Down Chick

Chapter Twenty-Two: At Last

Chapter Twenty-Two: At Last

As I entered the room, I looked around expectantly. Prisoners dressed in their orange jumpsuits sat at different tables with others before them. The tables had space between enough to leave privacy, and guards lined the room to make sure no chaos happened. As I examined each inmate, I searched for the familiar features of my father. Not seeing him I frowned. I stood there for a moment as attention slowly focused on me and then back. I knew that some of the inmates probably hadn’t seen a female in a long while, but the way that some of them stared made me shudder.

I turned and faced the officer that had brought me into the room. “I’m sorry, I haven’t seen my father in ten years and I don’t—”

He nodded his head in understanding. “You’re Emmanuel’s daughter, right?”

I nodded my head. It felt weird hearing my father’s first name. I was so used to the title of Dad. The officer’s gaze flickered over me. “You have his some of his features,” he said noncommittally.

“You know him, then?” I asked slowly.

He nodded. “Yep, he’s one of our more well-behaved prisoners. Had a few rough years when he first came here, but now he’s moderately good all around,” he informed me.

I smiled slightly at that. Regardless of what he had been arrested for, I’d always known that my dad wasn’t a bad person. He’d never cheated on my mom or anything of the sort. He’d always been, strong, proud and inspirational to me. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I had always been a daddy’s girl. I favored him over Monica, even before she changed.

“He’s being brought right now,” he said, after speaking into a walkie-talkie with another officer.

Nervousness and anxiety rushed through me renewed and fully energized. He was coming. The man that I had idolized for so long. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from him. I didn’t know if he would even appear the same as I remembered him. I clenched my fists tightly as I bit my bottom lip, another nervous gesture.

When he finally appeared through another bar encased door, I inhaled deeply as I saw him. I lifted a hand to my mouth in shock. He looked nothing like the man that I had known all those years ago. Even from this distance I could see the lack of emotion in his eyes. He had once had a clean-shaven and unbruised, smooth face—now he was scarred and scary looking. A long ugly gash that had healed went through the left side of his face. His light brown eyes seemed to radiate from among the small almost unnoticeable scars that lined his face. He wasn’t the skinny man that he had once been either. He was buff and he held an air of menace to him. This wasn’t the man that I had spent my first few years of life with.

This was the man that was among their best behaved?

Looks can be deceiving, Keish, I thought to myself.

Yet, I knew he was changed. It was more than that. This was someone who the system had gotten a hold of. There was no telling how many other changes had been made within him. I continued staring at him for a moment longer before I tried to look away. I found that I couldn’t. What was I thinking? This was my daddy. This was the man that had with one smile could fix all my sorrows. I inhaled, my heart fluttering rapidly as he got closer.

The phrase deer caught in the headlights ran through my mind. In that moment I may as well have been caught in the headlights. I couldn’t tear my gaze from him, even as he began to scan the room. When his eyes finally fell onto me, the emotionless expression he held seemed to fade. His mouth twisted into a smile, before he made a comment that I couldn’t hear to the officers that escorted him into the room.