“What’s going on?” he asked, looking around at the pale, silent faces of everyone who loved him.

No one answered at first.

Then Teresa, sitting very straight on the sofa with her hands clamped over her knees, spoke.

“Tell me your name,” she said.

He gave a small, dry laugh, the laugh of a man hoping this is somehow still a misunderstanding he can charm his way out of.

“Mom, come on,” he said.

My father-in-law, Joaquin, who had said almost nothing through all of this, stood up and laid a printout from the sheriff’s department on the dining table, hard, so that the sound of it cracked through the room.

“They ran your prints,” he said, “against the old records.” And Santiago went dead still, and I watched the last of the performance leave him, watched the gentle, patient expression he had stolen from his brother slide off his face like a mask coming loose, and underneath it was a stranger.