Aurelio paced the length of the corridor and back, unable to sit.

Mireya made coffee for everyone and pressed cups into people’s hands.

And Santiago’s students — the children he had taught in a courtyard when he had nothing — sat on the floor of the hallway because every chair was taken, and would not go home.

They waited together, the richest man in the room and the poorest, through the whole long night, for a boy who belonged, it turned out, to all of them.

At some point in the small hours, Aurelio stopped pacing and sat down on the floor beside the children, because there was nowhere else left to sit and because he could no longer bear to be apart from them.