Raymond felt guilty about sending the rowdy boys into the other room, where they might bother their mother. Rita Aguerra had already worked a long day and would get up well before dawn to get to her second job. She didn’t so much sit in her comfortable chair as collapse into it, sagging within the seat’s broad contours. Raymond didn’t doubt she would be asleep by the time he finished making dinner, unless she’d drunk too many cups of sour black coffee before returning home.

Over the main door frame hung a crucifix and some old dry palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday. She dutifully attended Mass each week, though occasionally she watched broadcasts of official Unison Church services, which seemed bland and passionless to her. The Archfather, with his beard and fancy robes, was supposed to be the impartial spokesman for all faiths, as determined by the united representatives of the world’s major beliefs, but to Rita, the old Catholic Church seemed much more religious.

Whenever he looked at his mother, Raymond’s heart ached. Rita Aguerra’s long dark hair was now streaked with gray. In her younger days, she had spent hours brushing it, keeping the raven locks shiny, but now she usually just pulled her hair back in a ponytail or twisted it into a bun. She’d been a beauty once—Raymond could still see it in the softening shape of her face—though now she had no time to maintain her looks and no hope of finding renewed romance. Hard work and too many responsibilities had turned her into a stocky, muscular matron.

Rita worked as a clerk for an off-world merchandising organization by day and as a waitress by night. A steady diet of coffee and cigarettes gave her the false energy to get through the day and the jitters that kept her awake during the few hours she should have been able to rest at night.

Every time she came home, though, Rita still managed to engulf each of her four boys in a heavy-armed hug, smothering them with her rose-scented perfume. The strong woman held her family together by the thinnest of threads, and now Raymond was old enough that she could lay some of the burden on his shoulders. He took it from her without complaint.

One night a month earlier, the two of them had sat up alone at the wobbly dining table. Rory, Carlos, and Michael had been hustled off to bed and tucked in, where they would continue to goof off for half an hour before finally dozing. Looking across at Raymond, Rita had lit another cigarette, something she rarely did when the younger boys were awake. The fact that his mother did so made Raymond realize that she considered him an adult, the man of her house since Esteban Aguerra had run off.

She had told him about it, giving details he had always wondered about but had been too afraid to ask. “I might not be the easiest person to get along with, especially for a happy-go-lucky man like your father, but I’ve always tried to live up to my responsibilities and do the best I can. You boys are my treasures, and your father might have been a diamond in the rough… but it was very much in the rough. The night he left, we had a shouting match, one of our worst arguments ever. I can’t even remember why it was important… I had bought him a new pair of shoes, or something.”