While Aurelio was reading that report, Santiago was climbing the stairs to the apartment, soaked to the bone, still shaking from the stranger in the cemetery.

Griselda was waiting.

She took one look at the folder — at the copy of the acceptance letter, damp and precious in his hands — and she snatched it from him and tore it in half, and in half again, and let the pieces fall.

“You start work next month,” she said.

“At the warehouse.

Your wages come to my account.

That’s the end of it.” Santiago knelt and gathered the torn pieces of the letter off the floor, the way he had gathered so many broken things in that apartment, and pressed them together as if he could make them whole.

“I just need one chance,” he said quietly.