The Warden's Daughter

            “Babe, you can’t go.” Leo says pulling me back into his chest. I smile and kiss his cheek. We both laugh and I settle on his lap for a few more minutes.

            “Do you really have to go home?” He asks. I raise my brow. I didn’t think I would get this reaction from Leo. He didn’t seem the type to be clingy when we first started dating each other.

            “Yes. My father misses me. It is only for the summer and I said you could visit anytime you want.” I tell Leo. He fingers through my bleach blonde hair. My friends nicknamed me the ice queen for it.

            “I’m not sure I want to spend my days inside prison grounds.” He says. I roll my eyes and frown at him.

            “Not even for me.” I say tantalizing him with my ocean blue eyes. He kisses my lips again and he is smiling.

            “Fine, but if I get killed while I am there…” I stop him right where he is. People always made assumptions that I wasn’t safe in the prison grounds, but I thought it was where I was the safest.

            “I grew up there my whole life and nothing has happened. You’ll be fine.” I tell Leo. He nods once and kisses my nose. Leo and I met just in the fall and we have been together ever since. He was safe and sweet and safe. After graduating college, I decided I would spend the summer with my father before heading back to Kentucky for my junior year. He seemed lonelier than ever.

            “Okay. I will still be scared shitless.” He tells me and I laughed at him. There had been a close call one time in the prison grounds, but it was fine in the end.

“I’m going to miss you. Call me when you get to Mississippi?” I nod and he loads the last of my luggage in my truck. He kisses me one more time before I head off for my road trip back him. I just recently finished my sophomore year from Kentucky State University.

            My father would be happy to see me. It has been a long three years since I graduated from high school. When school was out, I stayed with my friends and visited my father for maybe a week or two, but this summer, I would stay the whole summer. His health wasn’t the best, but he refused to step down from his Warden status. He needed me.

            My father runs the Mississippi State Penitentiary with over 18,000 acres of land. The facility was basically its very own town. We had our own zip code and streets and we grew crops and threw rodeos every summer for the public. Way back in the day, the prison used to be a plantation. The plantation home still existed to this day and I lived in—grew up in it. The house was massive, but not many people saw the magnificent place I lived in.

            As a child, I took the bus out of the facility gates to school with the other guard’s children that too lived on the grounds. Kid’s parents tended to stay away from my father and I because they would never let their child have a play date in a prison. My childhood was lonely, but I had the inmates to speak to. Some of them were nice and others were downright mean and nasty. My father had a guard watch me everywhere I went when I was in the blocks. I liked visiting some of the inmates everyday and I found criminals fascinating.

            I roll up the car window and turn my air conditioning on. As I was going farther down south, it was getting hotter and moist. A nasty combination. I get my phone out and dial my father’s number. He had a cell phone, but rarely answered it because he didn’t understand how to work the thing. To my surprise, he picks it up.

            “Hey Dad.” I say into the phone. He greets me with a hacking sound and I know his coughing is back.

            “Hi sweetheart.” He says happily. I was glad that he wasn’t too sick to work. The doctors said that his immune system was so weak that any sickness like the cold could kill him. He had to be careful.