Falling With Grace

Trust no one.

I opened the front door and slipped outside, their gazes swinging towards one another.

“Thank you for your help.”

I shut their wooden front door, the paint peeling down the center, then turned left.

Chills centered down my torso, rippling around my spine and arms, sending a shiver dancing across my muscles as I made my way down the overgrown sidewalk, the chunks of cement creating divots in the walking path.

Dogs barked behind makeshift fencing, its recycled walls, something you’d find on a shed roof. A tree pushed into it, causing it to bulge under the pressure, and a mud puddle mirrored the blue sky and evergreen leaves.

A car door slammed behind me.

Two men stepped out of a white, single-cab truck as I glanced over my shoulder.

I turned back and limped down a side street towards a teen girl bouncing a basketball in her driveway.

“Hola,” I said, waving and doing my best to remember the Spanish Jorge taught me in our years together.”What direction is the border?”

The girl pointed, and I sucked in a breath of relief the border wasn’t the way I’d just come.

“Gracias. Howfar?”

“A kilometer or so.”

I converted kilometers to miles and nodded.”Gracias.”

Half a mile.

Fifteen minutes later, I hadn’t even made it a quarter of the way.

My knee ached, and my head throbbed. The sun shone too bright, causing my eyes to squint in its hellacious beams.

But at least I’d made it into town, surrounded by crowds where hundreds of people would deter Miguel from finding me.

At least, I hoped it would.

Children’s screams of joy and laughter resounded as I turned the corner, followed by splashes of water from the community Olympic-sized pool on the other side of the street.

“Grace.”

Sweat dripped down my back as I turned.

Parked on the side of the road was the same white truck I’d seen pull up to the couple’s house. Leaning against the passenger door was a man in tight blue jeans, a button-down vibrant shirt, and pointed cowboy boots with silver tips.

“You have the wrong person.”

I turned back around and walked faster, swallowing down the pain in my body until pounding footfalls sounded behind me.

Sprinting with a horrid limp, I darted into the streets, cars blazing their horns in a chaotic chorus of warnings. A vehicle skidded to a stop mere inches from my shins, his horn hammering my ears.

“¡Qué mierda, lunático!”The man threw his hands into the air as if I intended to get hit by a car today.

“Sorry.Lo siento.” I patted the hood of his car as I walked around it, then looked over my shoulder.

The man worked his way across the two-lane road without attracting attention. I bolted, running into the community pool, stumbling over my feet.

Tears burned in my eyes as the pain pulsed through every fiber of my being. I weaved through kids and their parents, the man hot on my heels with an uneasy calm about him.