Finding Grace

Chapter One

Annie Grace stared at the ceiling.

No dimples.

No divots.

No patterns.

Just cracks and chipped paint.

This is how time passed at Christina Crain Correctional  Institution – minute by minute, hour after hour. Glaciers moved at a faster pace. Mountains and canyons formed more quickly.

They say that people lose track of time in places like this. Those people obviously never spent a minute of their life incarcerated. When all you have is time, it synchronizes with your heartbeat.

Annie Grace had been locked up in Gatesville, Texas, for nine months now – 274 days to be precise. Her short brown hair had grown long and returned to its blonde roots. She was pale from spending her days in this drab, cinder-block box. Her face and skin didn’t look like she had aged a day, but inside her soul felt like it was a hundred years old.

Her arms ached from that morning’s fifty pushups, and her neck was stiff from all the time spent nervously watching the other inmates when they were in the exercise yard. Relaxing was impossible here and working out was one of the few ways to release energy that didn’t get you in trouble.

It was moments like now that she dreaded. She sat on her bed and stared at the ceiling, hoping for something to focus on.

A bug. A water stain. Anything.

No, it was just Snoopy staring back at her. Snoopy was a large area of chipped paint revealing the light blue underneath the current layer of off-white that was now so dirty it was closer to gray. Annie had named it Snoopy because it resembled the “Peanuts” character, especially when the beagle was doing his best bird of prey imitation.

Annie passed the first few weeks dreaming up Snoopy stories, but she had exhausted the possibilities months ago. The spot was now a comfortable old friend that could communicate without making a sound, which was good … because it was a spot of chipped paint and not a flesh-and-blood dog.

Annie pushed her hair back over her ears and sighed, returning to the one thing she so wished to not think about.

Jessica.

She thought about her every moment like this, when there was no task to occupy her time and no daydream to which she could escape. Jessica was a little girl who came to Daddy’s faith-healing revival a few years earlier.

Annie’s side ached and a trace of nausea seeped into her stomach, causing her to wince. It was always this way when she thought of the little girl.

Jessica’s parents had put all of their faith in the healing powers of Annie and refused to seek medical help as Jessica grew sicker. They just prayed harder until the five-year-old with shoulder-length blonde hair and big blue eyes died of an infection that could have been cured with a few cents worth of antibiotics.

Annie could have done something. Yes, she could perform healings when she was a little girl. But not long after Daddy decided to make her the star attraction at his revivals, it had all vanished.

That didn’t stop the revivals from rolling on or the donations from rolling in. Annie had been a fraud for years by the time Daddy promised Jessica and her parents that everything would be fine.

It wasn’t fine.

The stabbing in Annie’s side grew sharper, like a beast trying to claw its way out of her soul.