We heard what was happening to him.

We came to give a little of it back.” Aurelio could not speak.

His grandson had been beaten in that apartment, and had walked out of it each evening to feed and teach other people’s children.

Mireya went on, because now that she had begun she wanted the rich old man to understand exactly who his grandson was, and exactly what the neighborhood he had grown up in had seen.

She told Aurelio about the winter a family three doors down lost their father, and Santiago — himself fifteen, himself hungry — had quietly reorganized his whole study group around the two orphaned boys so they wouldn’t fall behind and lose their places at school.