Status Updates From The House of Broken Angels

Every man dies with secrets. Big Angel was certain a happy man was a man who died with the worst things safely hidden. A life was a long struggle to come to terms with things and to keep some things from others. This was his deepest secret, and it wasn’t even a sin.

The border in those days was different. No huge wall. No drones, no infrared towers. What awaited the de La Cruz family was a raggedy line of wooden booths manned by Immigration and Customs agents sitting on stools in the heat, bored to despair as they breathed limitless clouds of car exhaust, and more cynical every day as every driver said, “No, I don’t have liquor in my trunk!”