Alvin recognized the caution in his father’s movements, the furtiveness of a man hiding something in the one place no one had thought to look.

When Alvin stepped out of the shadows, Manuel froze.

But he did not look surprised.

He looked, instead, completely defeated, and also, somewhere underneath the defeat, faintly relieved.

“I knew you’d come eventually, son,” Manuel whispered.

Alvin looked at the key in his father’s trembling hand.

“Dad,” he said gently.

“What does that open?” And Manuel closed his fist tightly around the small rusted key, and looked at his son with an expression Alvin would never forget, an expression of a man who has held onto one last thing through a long humiliation, one final scrap of resistance he has not surrendered.