She parks her car, turns off the engine, and tells herself to take a deep breath, even as she prays that the van won’t come back to follow her.

Turning around in her seat, she watches as it continues unstoppingly down the road and snakes around a mountainous bend, its yellow lights disappearing into the night.

Her heart rate slows with each breath she takes. She starts her car engine, and once again begins her drive home – just another evening commute for the highest-paid prostitute in the country.

It is the middle of summer, and for Florida, that means indiscriminate light showers. I am sitting at the circulation desk of the public library where I work when my phone starts ringing in my pocket. I fumble to turn my ringer off, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment as I mutter an apology to my coworker and the patron she is tending to. I don’t bother checking the caller ID. Nobody but my mother ever calls me. In my head, I am planning the angry text message I plan to send her for calling me during work hours. But then, my phone vibrates again. My mother is nothing if not insistent.

“Sheila,” she says quietly, deliberately choosing to let my disrespectful tone slide this one time. “Tony’s here.”

I blink, confused. “What Tony?”

“Tony Tony,” my mom says. “Caridad’s Tony. He’s in Texas. He crossed the border.”

"There’s an intruder in the Garden of Eden. He has slithered past the trampoline bathed in moonlight and nestled inside the sturdy row of potted plants. "