But she stayed in Marisela’s life, and in Alma’s, and that was a choice both women made on purpose.

Because Ophelia had done the rarest and most costly thing a person in her position can do: she had seen a wrong being planned against someone with no power to repay her, someone the whole weight of the household was arrayed against, and she had acted anyway, knowing exactly what it would cost her, and it had cost her exactly that.

She had lost her job and her good name to move a table back against a wall so a baby she was not related to would not fall.

Marisela had spent her career around courage.

She knew the real thing when she finally saw it, and she was not going to let a woman like that walk out of her daughter’s life.

Alma would grow up, Marisela decided, knowing Ophelia’s name, and knowing exactly what she had done, and knowing that this — not the collar, not the cruelty — was what a person was supposed to be.