“I know a road,” he said quietly. “But you don’t come back the same.”
The woman stepped forward anyway. She knelt in the mud and held up the little white shoe.
“My son,” she whispered. “He drowned in the river last spring. The water took him, but it didn’t give him back. He wanders now, between the current and the shore. I want to bring him home.” almas perdidas
“Are you afraid?” Mateo asked.
Mateo took the small, cold hand. He led the boy back through the tunnel, past the cistern, through the slanting rain, to the river’s edge. The water was dark and swift. “I know a road,” he said quietly
Mateo leaned on his broom. “The way to where, señorita ?”
“They say you know the way,” she said. “My son,” she whispered
Mateo looked at them—the mother and the memory of a child—and understood something he’d spent twenty years running from. You don’t find lost souls. You join them. Or you let them go.