That someone could come.

That the story did not have to end where it began.

He took the case.

Of course he took the case.

It was, in a sense, the case he had been walking toward his whole life.

When he first met the boy — a thin, watchful sixteen-year-old who flinched when Santiago moved too quickly and answered every question with the careful minimum, the way you answer when you have learned that words can be used against you — Santiago did not start with the law.

He started by sliding a sandwich across the table and saying nothing about it, just leaving it there, the way someone had once left bread for hungry children in a courtyard.