PART 2
“Dad, those kids can’t stay here,” Rodrigo said, almost whispering, but with an urgency that chilled the room.
Alejandro watched him without replying.
It wasn’t the reaction of someone uncomfortable with strangers. It was fear. Real fear.
Mateo, sitting in the dining room with Lupita on his lap, took a piece of sweet bread and gave it to her first. The little girl bit into it carefully, as if afraid someone would take it away.
Alejandro sat down across from them.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Mateo.”
“And her?”
“Guadalupe, but I call her Lupita.”
Alejandro nodded slowly.
“Where are her parents?”
Mateo looked down. His fingers tightened around his glass of milk.
“They died.”
Silence filled the dining room.
“It was a year ago,” the boy continued. “My dad was driving a taxi at night. My mom was with him because they were coming back from dropping off food at my grandma’s house. A black car hit them and drove off. They said no one saw anything, but I heard things.”
Alejandro felt a blow to his chest.
“What did you hear?”
Mateo looked toward the door, where Rodrigo was pretending to talk on the phone in a low voice.
“A man went to the children’s home where I was. He gave money to the director. He told her that my sister and I shouldn’t be together. That it was better for us to separate.”
Lupita stopped eating and hid against her brother’s chest.
“They took me to a children’s home in Iztapalapa and her to another one in Tlalpan,” Mateo said. “I ran away three times before I found her.”
Alejandro couldn’t move.
A year earlier, Rodrigo had come home in the early morning, drunk and trembling, saying his black SUV had been stolen. Alejandro remembered the police report, the lawyers, the bought silences, the overly hasty responses.
At that moment, everything began to fall into place.
Rodrigo came into the dining room.
“Dad, I need to talk to you. Alone.”
“No,” Alejandro replied.
Rodrigo clenched his jaw.
“You’re making a mistake. You don’t know who they are.”
Mateo stood up.
“I do know who you are.”
Rodrigo’s face went pale.
The boy pulled a broken, metal keychain from his jacket pocket, engraved with the initials RS.
“I found it in the street that night, near my dad’s taxi. I kept it because
