Eighteen

 

It had been years since I’d been cut off from my mother’s family, and there was one man I knew who would help. My only hope was that I could reach him before his men opened fire on us. Thankfully we were only about ten minutes away.

“Stay with me. Please,” I said as I bit back tears.

Nearly a decade had passed since I’d visited, but I still knew the way. My mother had made sure of it. She’d even made a song of it, a rhyme. It was a little like “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” but with street names. Maybe she knew one day I would need him and that was how I would remember.

The estate was larger than I recalled but held more warm memories than my father’s house. A tall stone-and-iron fence surrounded the property and the gate was open, one guard in the shack, but there was no time to stop.

It had been so long since I’d last seen my grandfather. Would he recognize me? The years apart were not by my choice, but the tighter my father wound the leash around my mother’s neck, t