Through flurries and freezing cold, Brandi Smith walks to the warm snuggle of a little girl’s hug.
Alexis, 9, gets off the school bus and there’s Mom.
“Our first snow day,” Smith says and throws her arms around Alexis, who buries a smile in her mother’s neck.
These two head home. Their home, finally.
Christmas a year ago, Smith was in prison and Alexis lived with her grandmother.
“I love being here because I’m with my mom,” Alexis, a fourth-grader, said minutes later in the cozy, upstairs Kansas City apartment with the little white Christmas tree in the corner. She dug through her backpack for school papers to show her mother.
Smith smiled. She’s where she wants to be, too, and knows she would not be there if not for the Journey House, the place that took her in after prison, the place she says saved her.