Lucía was forty four years old, with hands marked by years of scrubbing marble counters and lifting laundry baskets heavier than her own body. She had left Guatemala when she was nineteen, crossed borders with hope and fear braided together, and built a life in the United States one paycheck at a time. For nearly five years, she had worked in the Kessler household, learning the rhythms of the house as intimately as one learns the habits of a sleeping child. She knew which floorboard groaned near the upstairs study, which light flickered when the washing machine ran, and how the house felt colder when its owner was away.