Laura Andrade

Jean Knight Pace

With a new life in a new state and more money coming in than Miguel and I had ever imagined possible, you might have thought I’d arrived.

In a way, I had. Twelve years clean. Two thousand miles away from the old life I’d once lived. Money in the bank. Now when people met me, I looked like a respectable housewife, not an ex-felon.

But life, she has a way of throwing curve balls. Especially, since distance and time hadn’t given me any magical coping skills. On the contrary, without drugs, I’d turned to any other substances I could use as a bandage when I felt scraped up.

And I felt scraped up a lot.

My leg still hurt constantly. My husband had taken a job in a city out of town. And my daughter was struggling to find her footing in adulthood.

So I smoked like a steam engine and drank like a fish. I got angry at the smallest provocation, and raged at anything bigger. My life, once again, was beginning to pull apart at the seams.

If I was going to survive, I needed more than a quadruple shot of espresso and a pack of cigarettes.

I needed, somehow, to find my way home. 

***

Enjoy the beautiful conclusion of Laura's story in part 3, Four Seconds to Heal, Indiana.

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