The car lights blink as the car beeps. Locks clack open and the engine turns over. It’s nothing like the Skylark’s step-by-step process, and again, I’m reminded of all I don’t know.

Massimo drives through the city, over a bridge, and with a single turn, we’re in a place that doesn’t look like anyplace I’ve ever seen. The buildings are low brick squares with windows broken like open eyes. The walls are painted in an alphabet I cannot read, and the cars lining the streets are coated in months’ and years’ worth of dust and grime. The litter is so old it’s caked in the corners of the curb.

With another turn, he takes me to yet another world where the litter remains, but the walls are fewer. The trees are painted in the strange runes, and a rotten egg smell comes through the car vents. Another turn onto a rutted road lined with puddles and abandoned concrete buildings. Between two orange posts holding an open gate puts us on a road cutting through a dense forest of gutted cars. In the headlights, I spot a cut chain dangling from the end of one of the gates. The thick trees border an unlit road that hasn’t been maintained. Reflectors sporadically indicate the shape of the road as the car bounces on rocks and water-filled divots.

We’re alone in the car with the shovels rattling in the back as the SUV heaves to and fro.

“You stay by me.”

“Are you nervous?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m fucking nervous I’m going to have to kill Lucari before we find out where he’s hiding our girls.” He stops by a tower of used tires where the rest of the men unload their tools, faces ghost white in the headlamps.

What am I supposed to think? If they dig up the remains of my mother in this swamp of garbage, how am I supposed to feel about Dario’s lies?

I’m angry at him. I am so mad I could spit in his face. I’d punch him if I could reach him, but would I really hurt him? Am I willing to get him killed?

No. I’m not. The best piece of me would die with him. I’d escape the Colonia because of what he taught me, but I’d never find happiness. I’d walk through life an incomplete shell of a human.

“You won’t do that.”

“If I don’t like what I find here…” He slaps the car into park. “You better fucking believe I will.”

He gets out.

For the first time in a long time, I pray. I ask the Holy Mother for strength, for insight, and mostly I pray that I was lied to.