If the man who had just married me carried Santiago’s scar, and spoke with Santiago’s private words, and knew Santiago’s house, then who in the name of God had we buried three years ago under my husband’s name?

That question is a particular kind of horror, and I do not recommend that anyone ever have to hold it.

It is one thing to lose a husband.

It is another thing entirely to sit in a dark bedroom at dawn and realize that you may not know who you lost, that the grief you have carried for three years may have been aimed at the wrong grave, that somewhere a real death happened to a real person whose name was never spoken over the coffin.

I did not yet let myself follow the question all the way to its answer, because the answer was too large and too monstrous to look at directly.