Three horses were tied beneath a wooden shelter.
A garden grew behind the house.
Elias stared.
“You live here?”
Maribel helped him down.
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“No.”
A little girl appeared in the doorway.
She could not have been more than eight.
She stared at Elias.
Then she looked at Maribel.
“Is he the one?”
Maribel froze.
Elias noticed.
“The one what?”
The girl disappeared inside.
Maribel closed her eyes.
“Children hear things they shouldn't.”
Elias looked at her.
“You know who I am.”
It wasn't a question.
Maribel did not answer.
That silence frightened him more than a gun.
He tried to step backward.
Pain nearly dropped him.
Maribel caught his arm.
“Not so fast.”
“Who told you my name?”
“Nobody.”
“Then how—”
She looked directly into his eyes.
“I saw you eleven years ago.”
Everything inside Elias went still.
The room seemed to shrink.
Eleven years.
The number had followed him like a shadow.
Maribel released his arm.
“You were younger.”
Elias stared at her.
“Where?”
She looked toward the window.
“Black Hollow.”
His face changed.
He hadn't heard that name spoken aloud in eleven years.
Black Hollow had been a mining settlement.
A place of dust, wooden houses and desperate men.
A place where Elias's brother had died.
A place Elias had sworn never to return to.
“What did you see?” he whispered.
Maribel's expression softened.
“You.”
“Doing what?”
“Running.”
Elias looked away.
He remembered.
A burning building.
Men shouting.
His brother screaming his name.
And Elias running.
He had spent eleven years telling himself that he had run because there was nothing else he could do.
Maribel had apparently seen something different.
“You were carrying a child,” she said.
Elias's head snapped toward her.
“What?”
“A little boy.”
The room became silent.
Elias remembered the night.
He remembered smoke.
He remembered fire.
He remembered carrying someone.
But he had never known whether the child had survived.
“Who was he?”
Maribel didn't answer.
Instead, she turned toward the doorway.
The little girl was standing there again.
Beside her was a boy.
He was perhaps twelve years old.
Thin.
Quiet.
And staring at Elias with an expression that made Elias's heart stop.
The boy had his brother's eyes.
Elias could not breathe.
Maribel stepped between them.
“This is Mateo.”
Elias looked at the child.
Mateo looked back.
“You know my uncle?”
Elias's knees weakened.
“Who is your father?”
The boy frowned.
“I don't know.”
Elias looked at Maribel.
She said nothing.
“You said his name was Samuel,” Elias whispered.
Maribel's face changed.