for a moment julia could not anything wxcept his own heartbeat

asked why he did not use Montemayor.

He said, “That name has enough buildings.”

Ramírez was the name he grew up with, complicated and painful but part of him. Rivas was the name of the father he never met. He kept both because identity, he had learned, was not a clean replacement. It was a table big enough to hold truths that did not always like each continue reading …