When they lived together in Perla’s house, Mauro sometimes crept out of bed, careful not to wake Elena, and went to the roof to smoke cigarettes. He thought she never noticed, but Elena always woke to the void he left in their bed. When she followed, she’d find him staring past the veined mountain lights. Sometimes she watched and let him think he was still alone. When she did say his name, he met her with an indecipherable expression.

One night when Mauro left the bed, Karina sleeping in a crib at its foot, Elena lay still in the room thinking of her own father, a man she never knew beyond photographs Perla removed from their frames and placed in a chest that was never to be opened. In the same chest, she kept the deed to the house, bank papers, and a letter from a woman who claimed to be her husband’s new wife. Elena discovered it in a closet one day, though she never told her mother. When she had her own children, Elena understood a mother is entitled to her secrets.

She heard Mauro’s footsteps flat and rushed. Not his usual nocturnal choreography to avoid waking her and the baby. He came to her side and found her already awake. “Elena, I saw it. With these eyes. I saw it!”

“Saw what?” She expected he’d witnessed a car wreck or robbery on the street below. It wouldn’t be the first time. Or even that he’d spotted a UFO, since the news had reported more sightings of orbs like fireballs above the Nazca lines.

“A condor flying over our barrio, and when it came to our house the wind held it above me and—” He lost his breath, dropping his face in his palms. When he pulled them away, Elena saw his eyes glossed with tears and asked him to show her.

They ran together to the roof, but there was no great bird. Not even stars. Only clouds blotting the sky.

“There are no condors in the city, Mauro.”

“I saw one. I need you to believe me.”

She wanted to offer some logic to make the apparition more plausible, said it might have escaped from the zoo or been blown off course from the páramo of Chingaza. Mauro had spoken before about condors. He once told Elena he’d gone with a friend up to Ciudad Bolívar and saw boys shooting a condor as it glided over the escarpment but the bird had escaped their bullets. Elena didn’t believe his story, even if as a child she’d pretended Bogotá was not a city but a jungle thick as the manigua of Caquetá, the brick skins of buildings were tree bark, and police sirens were the calls of monkeys and birds.

In school, she’d learned condors preferred open tundra where they could feed easily and soar for miles without a flap of their wings. They were scarce because, besides being the national symbol of freedom and sovereignty and the largest flying creature on earth, they were believed sacred and immortal, guardians of the upper world. Their population diminished by poisonings and hunters after their bones, feathers, and organs, which were said to have healing properties.