The Captain and the Obsequito - IV - He will be returned

 I ended the call and instinctually reached for the nearest thing to me as I felt my knees begin to crumple beneath me: slow, like a falling brown paper bag.  I landed gently and neatly, folded into a little half crouch on the motel carpet, my left arm still outstretched with the cellphone flung beside it and gripping the edge of the mattress behind me.  As the sobs began to shudder through me, I pressed my thin shoulders against the bedframe and held my small swollen belly with both hands as I shook.  Pain poured from me, flooding rivulets from my tears, my breath, my sweat, melting and fading and dissipating into the stale air of the warm little room like smoke, or the fleeting shreds of one of my many bad dreams.  Fear.  Longing.  Heartbreak.  Worry.  Guilt.  All buried and bottled up for so long beneath my fresh acne, and tired brave face.  I did it. I might have thought.  We're going to be okay.  We're all going to be together. Mi familia.  Mi cebollita.  Contigo, siempre.  We will be happy.  We will be okay.  But those were all thoughts later, on my long walk in the misting rain and the dizzying beautiful reality with which it kissed my skin as if each droplet was to say "You did it momma, you did it.  You're a fighter, you're a family, he's going to be okay".  No, none of those thoughts could be formed yet in the motel room after the phone call.  Only two words, dripping from the emotions that were so eagerly, finally, pouring out of me at last.  Swirling in the new, so achingly waited and fought for, peace in my skull and soul.  Filling the little shapes being formed by my muttering lips, making their sound into the room on my shuddering breath.

"Gracias, Dios. Gracias, gracias, gracias, GRACIAS, gracias..."

The blind horse registered Argentetnian polo restry: Diego Rivera. would be re registered as "Full horse: name, Blind Melon AKA Diego.  Miranda Holman.

We won.