Perdidas [exclusive] — Almas

Mateo almost laughed. The cantina was full of lost souls—old men nursing grudges, a guitarist with no strings, a dog with three legs. But he understood. She didn’t mean the living dead. She meant the real lost ones. The ones who had slipped through the cracks of the world.

She opened her arms. He stepped out of the circle of lost souls and into her embrace. For a moment, he was solid. Warm. Real. almas perdidas

Mateo felt his own heart crack. He saw his daughter, not as a woman he’d never met, but as a five-year-old in white shoes, reaching for his hand as he walked toward the door. “Papá, don’t go.” And he’d gone. Mateo almost laughed

Mateo lifted him up. The boy’s feet did not touch the water. Instead, he dissolved—first his toes, then his knees, then his smiling face—into a thousand drops of light that sank beneath the surface and were gone. She didn’t mean the living dead

She kissed her son’s forehead. Then she handed him to Mateo.