You are sixty-two years old, and for most of your life, nothing about you has ever seemed like the beginning of a story people would pass around at church dinners or whisper about at the barber shop.
You have been a carpenter in a small riverside town outside Guadalajara for so many years that the grain of cedar, pine, and oak feels more familiar under your hands than your own skin. You built kitchen tables for young couples, repaired rocking chairs for widows, and made toy trucks for little boys whose parents could not afford store-bought gifts. Your life has never been glamorous, but it has been honest, and in your town, honest still means something.
The one extraordinary thing in your life has always been your daughter, Sofía.
When your wife died, Sofía was only ten, all long braids, serious eyes, and small hands that still reached for yours whenever a thunderstorm rolled across the river. Grief did not enter your house like a visitor. It moved in like a second winter. It sat at your table, slept in your hallway, and followed you into every room. Yet even then, you did not allow yourself to collapse, because your daughter had already lost one parent, and you could not bear the idea of her losing both.
