The question rose in him before he could stop it, just as it had again and again since he turned fifty a year ago. He saw time, which moved like the air, and his own history suddenly racing toward him out of the future.

In his mind, he heard his grandmother, Maria-Elena, telling his story. The old woman lived in his house when Rivas was a boy. Small, uneducated, always bent over a floor mop or dishpan, she was the cuentista, the storyteller. He followed her from room to room while she cleaned, and listened to her tales of the Moreno family, his mother’s lineage. Cameos of long-dead relatives she’d learned from the women before her. Arcadio Moreno, the ganadero killed by his favorite horse. The songbird, Maria Isabel Moreno, who bewitched three men in the same family. Eduardo Moreno, the tallest son of Rafael, who went north to Texas and was killed by a train.

Now Rivas heard his own story in the old woman’s dark, slow voice. Daniel Rivas, she said. The policeman, stabbed one night while arresting a seventeen-year-old Sureño. Or, killed by an unknown assailant in a passing car. Or, shot under a grape arbor by a drug dealer named Peña.

Is this my story?

Peña’s skin was olive-brown, almost black under the eyes. In the placidity and defiance of the man’s expression, Rivas saw something sad and timeless, like the shadow of an ancient campesino lost in a new land. How far had he been hollowed out by the gangs, the years in prison? Was it possible to calculate what was left inside a man’s soul? Had this criminal been sent here by the legends to kill him?

He thought of Teresa. “Vuélvete,” she told him every morning in the dark before he left. “Come back.”

Grandmother, is this my story?

Behind Peña, Rivas noticed a slight, soundless change in the shadows under the arbor. It happened so quickly that Rivas doubted what he had seen. Then he saw it again—the darkness silently moved. Rivas tried to keep his eyes on Peña’s.

The third time, Rivas caught a glimpse of Frames’s face in the dark walkway space, twenty-five feet behind Peña. He was moving forward, without a sound, gun held in two hands, pointed at the back of Peña’s head.

Although Frames had not made a sound, Rivas could see Peña sensed something, a change that must have flickered for an instant in Rivas’s eyes. Peña still did not move.

Then Frames said, “Drop the weapon. Suelte el arma.”

Rivas was surprised at the power of his partner’s voice. It seemed to come from a different source than the prattle a few minutes earlier in the car.