Read Online When I Knew You by Desireé Prosapio - Free Book Online
Authors: Desireé Prosapio
Tags: Blue Sage Mystery
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week I was "catching" on belay one of the best climbers in the state who was falling from platforms on purpose, knowing I would always keep her safe.
She trusted me. Now she didn't have a leg.
I stuffed a duffle with clothes I'd bought from the thrift store with the little money I could pull from an ATM around the corner from the hospital. I barely registered the drive until around midnight.
I pulled into a truck stop in Fort Stockton as my eyes began to shift in their sockets, desperate to close. I crawled into the rear camper bed and woke to the strafing of semi truck headlights pouring through the narrow opening in the curtained windows hours later. I cleaned up, heated up a burrito in the truck stop's micro and hit the road.
The terrain had changed completely from the plains I'd driven through early in the evening. Desert valleys stretched between small mountains, distant brothers to the Franklin Mountains of El Paso. I began to relax, feeling at home in the place I was born, where cactus and granite shared space and solitude. On the passenger seat next to me was a cassette tape recorder from the thrift store, and an unopened pack of batteries. I should listen to it again. Later, I thought.
Streaks of purple were slicing across the sky, sunrise reaching into the night to unlock the darkness ahead of me. When you drive west in the morning, time elongates. Sunrises last twice as long as when you drive away from them, but you can never get going fast enough to really escape. The light will come soon enough, ripping off the comforting darkness that had reduced the size of your world to the glow of your dashboard lights. Then you have to face what the universe has thrown at you, there are no more safe shadows, no warm spots under the covers. The next day arrives, refusing to be ignored or avoided.
I'd be in El Paso in a matter of hours, but I had no idea what to do when I got there. Was it safe to see Abuela and Antonia? Would I be putting them in danger? Did they know what happened? Who was the man they warned Pilar about?
Eliah's face flashed across my mind. Not the face he wore for months while I attempted to avoid him in social settings. The face at the fire. The one that made the pit of my stomach get cold and hard and my courage shrink into a tight little ball. I checked the review mirror, wondering if he was back there, somewhere, figuring out that I wasn't dead.
Getting home made so much more sense hours ago, but with miles under me it started to seem dangerously idiotic. If Eliah was looking for me, it would be the first place he'd go. He knew I was from El Paso, although I'd never gone into much detail, I didn't imagine it would be hard for him to find my family there. Who the hell was he? He obviously wasn't the glad-handing geeky insurance guy I thought he was when he came to the ropes course.
There were dozens of times I'd seen him over the last few months, but I couldn't remember anything that came close to the face I saw at the fire. I never saw that coming. What else was I missing?
Fabens was the next place with a decent size gas station. I had to try to call home, maybe pick up one of those prepaid cell phones. But first, church. Antonia said to go to the church, to see Father Henry.
Chapter 11
The church in San Elizario was the less popular sister of the missions in El Paso, resting in the historical shadow of Ysleta and Socorro, but no less beautiful. The plaza in front of the church still had the pecan trees, their trunks circled with a dirty white skirt of paint to discourage ants who, as the story went, disliked the feeling of the paint on their feet. Ants never seemed that picky to me.
The plaza itself was hard packed dirt, a few spots of grass surviving the pounding of fiesta goers over the years. Images of a dozen fiestas flipped through my mind: little girls dancing on the tops of their father's shoes, high schoolers walking in hormone-laced circles around the plaza holding
She trusted me. Now she didn't have a leg.
I stuffed a duffle with clothes I'd bought from the thrift store with the little money I could pull from an ATM around the corner from the hospital. I barely registered the drive until around midnight.
I pulled into a truck stop in Fort Stockton as my eyes began to shift in their sockets, desperate to close. I crawled into the rear camper bed and woke to the strafing of semi truck headlights pouring through the narrow opening in the curtained windows hours later. I cleaned up, heated up a burrito in the truck stop's micro and hit the road.
The terrain had changed completely from the plains I'd driven through early in the evening. Desert valleys stretched between small mountains, distant brothers to the Franklin Mountains of El Paso. I began to relax, feeling at home in the place I was born, where cactus and granite shared space and solitude. On the passenger seat next to me was a cassette tape recorder from the thrift store, and an unopened pack of batteries. I should listen to it again. Later, I thought.
Streaks of purple were slicing across the sky, sunrise reaching into the night to unlock the darkness ahead of me. When you drive west in the morning, time elongates. Sunrises last twice as long as when you drive away from them, but you can never get going fast enough to really escape. The light will come soon enough, ripping off the comforting darkness that had reduced the size of your world to the glow of your dashboard lights. Then you have to face what the universe has thrown at you, there are no more safe shadows, no warm spots under the covers. The next day arrives, refusing to be ignored or avoided.
I'd be in El Paso in a matter of hours, but I had no idea what to do when I got there. Was it safe to see Abuela and Antonia? Would I be putting them in danger? Did they know what happened? Who was the man they warned Pilar about?
Eliah's face flashed across my mind. Not the face he wore for months while I attempted to avoid him in social settings. The face at the fire. The one that made the pit of my stomach get cold and hard and my courage shrink into a tight little ball. I checked the review mirror, wondering if he was back there, somewhere, figuring out that I wasn't dead.
Getting home made so much more sense hours ago, but with miles under me it started to seem dangerously idiotic. If Eliah was looking for me, it would be the first place he'd go. He knew I was from El Paso, although I'd never gone into much detail, I didn't imagine it would be hard for him to find my family there. Who the hell was he? He obviously wasn't the glad-handing geeky insurance guy I thought he was when he came to the ropes course.
There were dozens of times I'd seen him over the last few months, but I couldn't remember anything that came close to the face I saw at the fire. I never saw that coming. What else was I missing?
Fabens was the next place with a decent size gas station. I had to try to call home, maybe pick up one of those prepaid cell phones. But first, church. Antonia said to go to the church, to see Father Henry.
Chapter 11
The church in San Elizario was the less popular sister of the missions in El Paso, resting in the historical shadow of Ysleta and Socorro, but no less beautiful. The plaza in front of the church still had the pecan trees, their trunks circled with a dirty white skirt of paint to discourage ants who, as the story went, disliked the feeling of the paint on their feet. Ants never seemed that picky to me.
The plaza itself was hard packed dirt, a few spots of grass surviving the pounding of fiesta goers over the years. Images of a dozen fiestas flipped through my mind: little girls dancing on the tops of their father's shoes, high schoolers walking in hormone-laced circles around the plaza holding
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