He slowly takes the notebook from your hand and closes it. Around you, children are laughing in the courtyard. A young man in the workshop strikes a piece of metal with a hammer. Somewhere in the kitchen, women are singing while stirring giant pots of soup.
Life is everywhere.
But your brother looks like a man who has been feeding a village with pieces of his own body.
“Walk with me,” Santiago says.
You almost shout at him to stop walking, stop hiding, stop making you chase the truth like a dog after a thrown bone. But then he coughs again, and this time he covers his mouth with a handkerchief.
When he folds it, you see red.
Blood.
Your anger disappears so fast it leaves you dizzy.
“Santiago.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
He looks at you, and for the first time since you arrived, the older brother mask cracks.
“I sold everything that was mine,” he says.
You laugh once, confused. “What did you have to sell? We were poor.”
He points toward the hills beyond the refuge.
