Those were years when Mauro was lost to drinking. Years when Talia saw her father only through the doorway because he was too drunk to be let inside. Years when, unwashed and disheveled, he cried at the sight of his baby girl and only turned away after Perla told him it wasn’t right for his daughter to see him in that state. When Perla became ill, Mauro returned for good. He announced he was a new man. He’d seen God or the gods, had conversations with angels and the ancestors. He’d been liberated of his vices and had cast away all his torments. Talia was only eight, but she remembered the vows he offered Elena over the phone as if in ceremony, to care for both her mother and their youngest girl.

She heard the Frenchman’s sudden movements. Felt his footsteps approaching the way she felt the nun’s steps down the hall before she opened the dormitory door and Talia snared her with the pillowcase. Now he was sitting on the mattress beside her. He asked if it was okay if he touched her hair.

There were girls at the prison school who’d slept with many boys and even grown men. They knew how to do all the things they liked: maneuvers they said made men lose their capacity for reason, bragging about it when out of the nuns’ earshot.

She heard him say she was beautiful, though not in the usual way; she had something, an attractive quality, he said, and the jeans he bought looked good on her. He eased the elastic from her hair so it spread over the pillow, thumbing a loose strand from her cheek to her lips.

She thought of the girls on the mountain. People assumed her tough because she’d ended up among them. There were girls who were much stronger. They could have hurt her if they’d wanted. Her only defense was to behave as their equal, unafraid. What would one of those girls do in her place right now? She tried to summon their voices, but the best she could find was her own, faint but firm. “That’s enough.” Her eyes had yet to open, but her tone made him retract his hand, rise from the bed, and return to the sofa.

At some point in the night he came back to the bed as she slept. She woke to his bare groin next to her. Her clothing was unprobed and nothing hurt, so she was fairly certain he hadn’t touched her. She pulled herself from the blanket and tried to step gently over the wooden floorboards so he wouldn’t stir. She picked up the wallet he’d left on the table, examining its contents. A few plastic cards and some cash. His phone required a pass code. She wanted to call her father but had seen too many detective programs where police traced a number in seconds.

In the facility, the therapist pushed the girls to consider past decisions, how a single choice could have irreparable consequences. Talia understood this, but when she thought of the day in the alley by El Campín, she couldn’t remember the moment when she decided she’d go to the kitchen and reach for a bowl of hot oil. The act took hold of her, as unconscious as breathing. Here in the Frenchman’s apartment, however, she experienced at least a few seconds of deliberation before putting on her sneakers, grabbing his wallet and phone, edging out the door and down to the street.