Falling With Grace

“Mamá?” I placed my hand on hershoulder, my moments of observation over. “It’s time to go home now.”

She turned and gave me a sigh as though she hadn’t just disappeared from my home. As if we didn’t have the conversation about safety.

What could I expect from her in this mental state?

“I’m almost done. I just needed a few peppers. I don’t remember them being so neglected.” She turned back and moved on to the next plant.

“Mamácita, these aren’t ours. You wandered off. Let’s get you back before people—”

“Ach,” she hissed. “I only went for a walk.”

I placed my hands on her shoulders, then grabbed her dirt-stained hands. “Let’s go. Nadia went out of her mind looking for you.”

“Nadia. I haven’t seen her in days.” Mamá scowled. Her utter disdain for her grew the more her Alzheimer’s worsened.

“She was at the house with you when you left. Don’t you remember?”

Her brows pulled together as I drew her away from the garden bed and toward my car, with three security vehicles parked behind me.

“I don’t think so.”

I sighed and walked her around the front, opened my passenger door, allowing her to slide in, and then shut the door when she settled inside.

“Gracias, José.” Digging into my pocket, I pulled out eighty-five hundred Pesos and handed it to the homeowner who stepped outside of his home. “Por tu familia.”

“Muchas gracias,señorHernández.”

José beamed, his eyes widening as he stared at more than a month’s wage in his hands.

I nodded and walked back to my car.

If I took care of my people, they would return in kind—keeping an eye out on the towns and city, bringing anything to my attention and resolving their disputes.

I’m not a saint or innocent, but I’ve never let my sins touch the people around me, including the towns.

I slid back into my seat and shut the door.

Mamá stared at her hands and the dirt embedded underneath her nails. “I remember when they were long and slender. Not like now with arthritis and pain.”

“Age touches us in different ways, Mamá.”

I turned the car around on the narrow residential street and made my way back to our home, where she’d somehow managed to slip through fifty well-trained guardsmen.

12

Grace

Droplets of water seeped down the wrong tube, and red-hot pokers burned my lungs.

The men’s garbled laughter slid across my skin like icicles forming on my flesh.

This couldn’t be how I died.

What did I do to deserve this?

The men’s chaotic shouts had my lips pressing tighter against the grate.

Javier leaned over the top, his blurred and wavering frame hovering above me, causing my pulse to thud in my ears.