A little girl stood before him, no older than seven. Her dark eyes were wide and solemn, her face smudged with dirt but strikingly beautiful. Uneven braids framed her cheeks, and an oversized sweater hung off her small shoulders. She extended a half-eaten roll wrapped in a crumpled napkin.
“You can have this,” she said seriously. “I know how it feels when your stomach hurts from not eating.”
The shame hit Sebastián like a blow. He — mourning his pain in luxury — being offered food by a child who had nothing.
“No,” he said softly, wiping his face. “I’m not hungry. I’m crying because I miss my son. I haven’t seen him in a year.”
The girl nodded as if she understood perfectly.
“I miss my mom,” she whispered. “I haven’t seen her in a year either. She ate some candy someone gave her, then she started acting strange. Doctors took her away. She never came back.”
Two losses. The same date. An invisible thread connected them.
Her name was Alma.
She spoke calmly — too calmly — about escaping an abusive orphanage, about sleeping wherever there were no dangerous men, about surviving day to day. Something inside Sebastián shifted. He couldn’t leave her there.