She told him about the notebook Santiago kept, a battered thing held together with tape, in which he tracked every child’s progress, which ones were close to a scholarship, which ones needed a letter written, which ones just needed someone to notice they had come to the courtyard hungry.

She told him that the children called it la escuela de la noche — the night school — and that on the evenings Santiago didn’t appear, which they later understood were the evenings he could not walk, the older students taught the younger ones themselves, because he had trained them to, because he had told them that the whole point was that it should outlast any one person.

“He built something in that courtyard, señor,” Mireya said, and her voice was thick.

“With nothing.