So when the rumor of a child reached him, Aurelio had reached, gratefully, for the interpretation that let him stay right: a scheme, a trap, a grasping woman. It cost nothing to believe, in the moment.

It only cost him everything, slowly, over fifteen years — and it had cost a child far more.

Standing in the cemetery rain with his son’s grandson’s photograph shaking in his hand, Aurelio Barrera finally paid the bill his pride had been running up since the day he decided he already knew everything worth knowing about a young woman named Araceli.

Chapter 6 — Find Him