A piece of my story, PG-13

I pulled up and parked with a heavy heart. This was not where I wanted to spend my day.
Looking back now, I do not recall who was watching the boys for me. Someone, surely; they were so young at the time. 2 and 4, I think.
The building looked unkept.
I had been forbidden to come here for quite some months. We owned the business, but as my husband had grown more secretive, he had insisted that I stay away from his work. With him in jail, it seemed important for me to come down in spite of his wishes, to assess the situation. How else was I going to pay the bills?
As I pushed the door in, a bell sounded somewhere in back. An unfamiliar woman stood at the counter copying information from the computer onto CDs. I offered a shaky smile.
"Hi. I am Kelly."
She kept feeding the computer. She looked different than the ladies I knew. Hard. Used up.

The foyer was filthy. I took a seat and chatted with the woman. If I was to be effective here, I figured I should get to know her.

My mindset was foggy, to say the least. My entire world was turned on it's ear, and I had no frame of reference to process all that I found around me. As a young mother with two boys and a bible study, my situation was absurd. Chatting with the woman at the computer I found my mind registering information from my surroundings with a disjointed neccessity. There were mouse droppings on the floor.

I excused myself to explore a bit. If the foyer was filthy, the back was unimaginable squallor. There was a long-dead mouse on the microwave. A mason jar of urine in the fridge. Layers of dust and grime coating every surface. It was way too quiet.

This was a bustling consumer electronics repair business. This room had been filled to bursting with men and equiptment. Laughter and phone calls and good natured chiding. My husband had run a pleasant environment. His emplyees were happy, and they worked hard for him. Good men, all. Not only were there empty chairs, but empty counters as well. Where were the tools and electronics?
At the back of the room, I noticed that the pull-down ladder to the attic was extended to the floor. With a glance over my shoulder, I could see that the woman was not interested in my wanderings. I began to ascend the rungs.

I had never been up here before. It was a good sized space with low rafters. The bare lightbulb was on. It took me a few moments to register my surroundings, it looked for all the world like a bad movie set. There was a dirty mattress on the floor in the center of the room. Upon the matress was a solitary book. Several of the rafters had been employed as shelves, and they held an odd assortment of chemicals. There was a hot plate. Maybe two, I don't remember for sure. There were a couple of buckets, too, coated with some resudue from a recent mixture.

My insides were spinning again, like the balance of all reality was no longer ruled by gravity. This was a familiar feeling, by this point. It was my new state of being.
It had begun, in earnest, the day that the policeman knocked at my door with the request to search my home. Was that a month prior to my search at the business? Three months? I no longer remember the time frame. That poor policeman! He had to give substance to the shadowy fears which had haunted my marriage. Meth was the something I had been unable to identify. And all I knew shifted into nightmare, as my world disolved into horror.

And now I stood in the attic. The woman downstairs was on the phone. I could hear her lowered voice more readily up here.
I walked over to the mattress.
The book in the center had a unicorn on the front. I recognized that book; but how did it get here?! This was my diary from when I was about 12. I opened at random and began to read the dramatic drivel of a preteen me.
For some reason, this was personal enough to shock me into myself.
These people had read my diary.
I clutched the book close to my heart, and decended the stairs with a purpose.
I marched right up to the woman at the front counter and announced that I was calling the police. I told her that I had found the Meth lab upstairs, and I dialed 911.