I watched none of it for long.

I had somewhere better to be.

Six months later, on a bright summer morning, I stood alone in front of a polished granite headstone in the memorial park on the north side of the city, engraved with two names: Arthur and Eleanor Vance.

I laid a fresh bouquet of white lilies at its base.

Father Thomas came down the gravel path and told me, gently, that after the Saturday he had turned them away at the gate, neither Alejandro nor Claudia had ever tried to set foot on those grounds again.

“They would be so proud of you, my dear,” he said, and pressed my hand, and left me to sit alone in the quiet garden with the wind moving in the oak trees.