The roof smelled like dust and old rain. The floor was packed earth, uneven and cold through the blanket I’d spread beneath my kids. There was no power, no running water inside, no proper door latch, and no promise that the place would still be standing by sunrise.
But it was ours.
Five dollars.
That was all I had paid for the little clay hut at the edge of a dying New Mexico town after everything else in my life had been stripped down to bone.
My daughter, Emma, was sixteen and sleeping lightly beside our duffel bags, one arm thrown over her face. My son, Caleb, had curled himself against my side sometime after midnight, still small enough to seek warmth without shame, though he’d turned twelve the week before.
Outside, coyotes cried across the black desert.
Inside, I stared at the low ceiling and thought, We have fallen so far that this feels like luck.
