Solano must have blacked out, because the next thing he remembered was waking in a hospital bed, a doctor telling him Paola and Carolina were dead, but Fátima was alive, in critical condition. She was in a room on her own, hooked up to a machine, tubes going in and out of her. She didn’t respond to his voice, but she was breathing on her own. He remained by her beside, praying for her throughout the night. In the morning she regained consciousness—and doctors were able to determine the extent of her injuries.

Finally Solano grieved, quietly and privately at first, but then his silent tears became racking sobs, and his sobs became howls of anguish, so loud and tortured two nurses escorted him from the building.

2

Solano spent the night in a bar drinking himself into an unthinking stupor. He woke in the morning on the street. He supposed the bar staff had carried him out there when they closed and realized he didn’t have identification or money.

He knew he should return to the hospital. Fátima was alive. She needed him. But he couldn’t bear to see her so fragile and helpless. He couldn’t bear to tell her she would never walk again, never run, never ride her bicycle, never do anything on her own. Besides, what could he do for her? He couldn’t give her back her legs, or her arm. All he could do was pity her. He wouldn’t be able to help it. And she didn’t need that. She would be better off without him.

He went to his apartment building. The police had cordoned it off, but an officer let him inside what remained of his unit to collect his wallet and pack some clothes into a bag. He tried not to look at the bloodstains shouting at him, but they were everywhere, and if he had a pistol right then, he might well have blown his brains out.

He spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly around the city…and he kept right on wandering for the next year, sleeping in parks or alleyways, scrounging trashcans for food, panhandling for change to buy cheap tequila.

Eventually he ended up in Xochimilco. By then he’d pulled himself together enough to hold down a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, and a few months after this, a job taking families through the old canals on a beat-up gondola. The gardens and greenery had a calming effect on him, the smog and noise and bustle of the city seemed a world away, and he began spending his free time exploring the waterways on his own. Sometimes he would disappear for days on end.

And then one day he never came back at all.

3