I pulled out onto the main paved road and left the family estate behind me.

I sat on the edge of a sagging mattress in a cinderblock motel just off the highway.

I’d paid for three nights up front with the last of the cash in my wallet.

At zero eight hundred on Monday morning the heavy humidity of a South Carolina morning was already creeping in under the door frame.

My uniform shirts were pressed and hanging on a flimsy wire rack.

I opened my phone and checked my banking app.