I have thought often about the wisdom of what Alejandro did, and about how easily he could have done it wrong.

He had a suspicion that would, if true, be the most enormous news of my entire life — that my mother, whom I had buried at ten, was alive.

A lesser man, or a more careless one, would have come home and blurted it. Mariana, I think I found your mother. And imagine the cruelty of that, if he had been wrong.

Imagine the hope detonating in my chest, and then the slow horrible collapse as the old woman turned out to be a stranger with a coincidental scar.