“I loved you as my mother, but I love my children more, and you will never touch them again,” Mariana said.

Teresa went silent, her mouth slightly open, as her wet palms slid down the glass.

Mariana got up from the stool, smoothed the front of her blue scrub top, and walked toward the exit.

The dry heat off the parking lot hit us like an open furnace door the moment we stepped outside.

I opened the passenger door of my work truck and took two cold bottles of water out of the cooler on the floor.

Mariana took one and drank half of it before she spoke.