Switched Read Free Page B

village. Please enjoy the photos of our house. We hope you will accept our exchange.
     
    Someone wanted me! Someone wanted to exchange my luxury Chicago condo for their home in Mallorca. I was thrilled. For the first time in four days, I felt wanted. Loved.
    Mallorca.
    Where was Mallorca?
    I Googled it, and a whole slew of gorgeous pictures popped up. Crystal clear turquoise water. Rocky coves. Castles. It was an island off the coast of Spain and from the looks of it, complete paradise.
    I clicked on the photos of the house. It was located in a medieval village near castle walls. One picture of a quaint bedroom, another of a small bathroom. A nice oven. Amazing views.
    I clicked reply on my email.
    Dear Mallorca,
    Yes! Let’s do it.
     

 

CHAPTER 3
     
    “This is great, Debra. Just great.”
    I pressed my cell phone against my ear so that I could hear Stacy over the noise in the airport as I ran for my gate.
    “Are you sure? Are you sure?” I asked her. “I’m not crazy?”
    “No! This is perfect. You need an adventure.”
    It had been a quick forty-eight hours. The Mallorca people were a lovely Swedish couple. They were urgently looking for a home exchange in Chicago because they planned on doing business here for a month. They loved my condo. It was perfect timing, they wrote to me. Kismet.
    I liked the sound of kismet. There was a sad lack of kismet in my life, unless catastrophe could be described as kismet. Kismet would probably turn my life around. I never imagined it could be brought to my doorstep by a middle-aged Swedish couple who owned a house on a Spanish island, but I was willing to take the leap and accept my kismet from whatever source.
    Getting a ticket to Mallorca at the last minute wasn’t easy. I would have to change flights in Reykjavik and Hamburg, and I was stuck in a middle seat for all three flights. During the first leg of the trip, I was more or less comfortable between an Icelandic stockbroker and a fifteen-year-old kid who was being sent to his father per their custody agreement.
    With a renewed sense of purpose and hope, my anxiety left me somewhere over Newfoundland, and I fell fast asleep. I woke only when we began our initial descent into Reykjavik, slumped over the kid, when he started to touch my breast in an inappropriate manner.
    I snapped back into my seat, mopping some drool off my chin with the back of my hand. “Did you just cop a feel?” I demanded.
    He shrugged. “I’m just a kid.”
    “Did you see that?” I asked the stockbroker, but he shrugged, too, and threw me a disapproving look as if I was a depraved cougar who preyed on defenseless boys during transatlantic flights.
    “I was sleeping,” I explained to him. “He took advantage of me.”
    The stockbroker said something in what I gathered was Icelandic, which made the boy and the man across the aisle chuckle. I stood up and wagged my finger at them.
    It turned out that air marshals frown on aggressive behavior—even if it’s completely justified—by passengers during descent. As far as Icelandair was concerned a woman standing up, wagging her finger at a boy and a stockbroker, was aggressive as hell and required zip-tie handcuffs.
    That’s how I landed in Iceland: as a terrorist suspect, hog-tied and carried by two Nordic air marshals while I screamed about Commies and my rights as an American citizen. I might have also sung “America the Beautiful,” but my memory is a little foggy.
    Foreshadowing is a marvelous thing, and if only I had recognized that traumatic experience as foreshadowing or a warning that maybe this home exchange vacation idea wasn’t all that wise, I would have saved myself a lot of suffering. After all, running away from your problems doesn’t work. They’re tethered to you. You’re running, and the problems are right there, keeping up with you as you huff and puff and make sweat stains in your clothes that will never come out.
    So, being trussed like a Christmas goose and