She had them opened, mapped completely, cleared of every trace of Matías’s long residence, and then permanently sealed, each access filled and reinforced and marked on a new plan that would be kept, from now on, in the convent’s own records, so that no future desperate man could ever again find a door that no living person remembered.

The bolts and locks that Matías had fitted to his hidden entrances — the ugly private hardware of his years in the walls — she had stripped out and set aside.

She had a different use in mind for them.

Chapter 22 — The Plaque

Amparo was the one who asked for the plaque, and she was very particular about it.

She wanted the old bolts and the melted-down locks from the secret entrances made into a single plain metal plate.

No names — not Matías’s, not Soledad’s, not her own.