The courtroom doors opened so violently that the sound echoed off the high walls.
Everyone turned.
Don Chema did too.
And for several seconds, the old man forgot that a judge was sitting in front of him.
He forgot the prosecutor.
He forgot the accusation.
He forgot the possibility that he might spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Because standing in the doorway were three women he would have recognized anywhere.
“Sofía…”
His voice barely came out.
Behind her stood Valeria.
And beside Valeria was Lucía.
His three daughters.
The three little girls he had raised in a two-bedroom concrete house in Ecatepec with secondhand clothes, beans, tortillas, borrowed textbooks, and more love than money could ever measure.
Except they weren’t little girls anymore.
Sofía was thirty-nine now.
Valeria was thirty-four.
Lucía was thirty-two.
And judging by the expression on Principal Robles’s face, at least one of them was exactly the person he had been praying would never enter that courtroom.
