“You did this to your brother, to your mother, over money?” “I was going to pay it back!” Santiago sobbed, sinking down onto his knees on his parents’ floor.

“Everything spun out of control, I never meant” And Teresa looked down at him with a grief so hollow it had gone past weeping.

“The crash was an accident, Santiago,” she said quietly.

“But living for three years under your brother’s name was a choice.

You chose it every single morning.”

He reached for my hand, then, and told me he had loved me, that he had been terrified of losing me, as if that were an explanation.

“I lost you the moment you made that choice,” I told him, stepping back out of his reach.