“Dad,” he whispered to no one, to the father he had never known, to the grave in the rain.

“Don’t let me die out here.” And then there were headlights.

Chapter 16 — Half a Silver Heart

The first truck braked hard, and Aurelio was out of it before it had fully stopped, running as fast as his old legs would carry him toward the shape crumpled at the roadside.

He gathered the boy up out of the mud, and the boy was barely conscious, cold and broken and impossibly light — too light, the lightness of a body that had not been fed enough for years.

And around the boy’s neck, on a worn cord, hung half of a small silver heart, broken along a jagged seam.