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On the fifth day, Miguel saw something that chilled him. When the girl stood to leave, she limped.

It is slight, easy to miss if you are not looking for it. Her left foot drags for half a beat before she corrects herself and continues across the square. Miguel feels a hot stab of anger, though he cannot yet say at whom—at fate, maybe, at poverty, at whoever has made this child dependent on secret handouts from a boy who still sleeps with the hall light on when thunderstorms hit too close to the windows.

That night, he opens Emilio’s bedroom door after midnight. The boy is asleep, one arm flung over the blanket, his face stripped of caution in the way only sleeping children can be. Miguel moves quietly to the desk. He is not proud of what he is doing, but fatherhood has a way of redrawing moral lines when fear is involved. Inside the top drawer, beneath math worksheets and a half-finished comic sketch, he finds an envelope.

It contains one hundred and forty dollars. Or rather, it should have contained more. The corner of the envelope is marked in pencil with careful totals and dates, and Miguel instantly recognizes his own handwriting style echoed in childish imitation. Emilio has been keeping records—allowance received, birthday money, money saved from not buying snacks at school, even twenty dollars missing from a cash tray in Miguel’s office one Friday, noted with shaky guilt and an asterisk beside it.

At the bottom of the page, a note reads: For Sofia’s medicine.

At last, the girl has a name.

Miguel sits on the edge of his son’s bed and feels the room tilt around him. Medicine. Not toys. Not candy. Not some silly tween romance. Medicine. He looks at Emilio sleeping and realizes the indignation burning inside him has shifted entirely. It is no longer aimed at his son for lying; it is aimed at a situation that forced a child to become secretive, resourceful, and burdened.

The next morning, he decides to confront him.

But plans, like glass, break easily.

Miguel calls Emilio into his study after breakfast. The room is lined with law books no one opens and art no one comments on, all dark wood and controlled taste, designed to intimidate other men and reassure investors. Emilio stands near the door in his uniform, backpack over one shoulder, trying to look calm and failing in the small ways children always fail. His fingers worry the strap. His eyes flick once toward the window.

“Sit down,” Miguel says.