The truth bubbled upward, something he’d known and never admitted. Fear—that awful, relentless fear—had stolen his ability to speak, to ask, to be open. Hurricane Katia, her raging seas, and all her power had snatched away his autonomy. He’d given it freely—that sense of self, that youth, that freedom—in a botched trade for Peter Vásquez. Maybe it was never a child. He opened his eyes. Light ribboned the door. Maybe the cost had always been this. The horror. The hope. The mourning.
