She thought often, afterward, about the particular shape of what Ophelia had done, because it was not the loud kind of courage that gets called courage.

Ophelia had not confronted anyone in a crowded room.

She had not made a speech.

She had done something quieter and, in its way, harder: she had noticed a wrong being prepared against a person she had no reason to risk anything for, weighed it against her own livelihood, and chosen the stranger’s baby over her own security, alone, with no one watching and no guarantee anyone ever would know.

She had moved a table back against a wall in an empty ballroom before the guests arrived, and told no one, and gone on serving canapés to the very people who were plotting, and then, weeks later, when she had been fired and slandered and had every reason to simply disappear and nurse her grievance, she had gathered the evidence and carried it into the lion’s den to lay it on the table.

Marisela had commanded people who ran toward gunfire.