These were not small things, and Inmaculada did not pretend they were.

But she had also been coerced by threat and by violence, had lived in a terror Inmaculada had watched cross her face, and had, in the end, wept with something like relief when the thing was finally dragged into the light.

Inmaculada turned it over for many days.

She spoke to Dr.

Guadalupe, and to the authorities, and — this mattered most to her — to Amparo, the sister most wronged.

She did not make the decision alone, and she did not make it quickly, because a decision about mercy made in haste is usually just a decision about comfort in disguise.

Chapter 19 — Amparo’s Word