“You got somebody picking you up, Cooper?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody.”
She looked at the parking lot.
Families. Balloons. A man cr*ing into a toddler’s hair.
“That’s a shame,” she said. “You were one of the ones I figured had people.”
“I thought so too.”
My husband, Brian Foster, had taken control of my business.
My sister Nicole managed the accounts.
The house was tied up in a mortgage I never authorized.
And neither of them answered when I tried to reach them after my early release.
Six calls. Two voicemails. One letter, returned.
I looked for work for nine days.
Three places turned me down the moment they learned I’d been incarcerated.
Another offered me an overnight office-cleaning job, but I needed a permanent address and bus fare.
I had neither.
I sl*pt two nights in a church shelter in Columbus and five on the couch of a woman from my cell block whose boyfriend made it clear on the sixth that the couch had other uses.
