The station was still half-asleep when they arrived.
It was five in the morning, that gray-blue hour when tricycles coughed themselves awake and vendors dozed against their baskets of bread. The air smelled faintly of rain, diesel, and yeast. Abbie dragged her feet across the gravel, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her heartbeat heavy in her chest. She didn’t look back at the town behind her. Looking would hurt too much.
Nana Sela walked ahead, small and steady, a suitcase rolling neatly behind her. She had worked for the Arcillas long enough to understand silence, the kind that meant safety, and the kind that meant something inside you was breaking. Today, she heard both in Abbie’s footsteps.
The bus waited at the far end of the terminal, its engine rumbling like a restless stoma
