The secret is revealed to her unceremoniously: Manolo is not her real father. She wonders if his best friend Sebastian, her real father, might have been kinder than the charismatic, dangerous man she was sent away from as a child. The life granted to her in the Midwest, confusingly predictable though not altogether safe, was worlds away from her mother's madness, and Manolo's reckless chaos, both of which she left behind in Mexico City. Her uncle Ed, more a father to her than anyone, doted on her as if she were his own despite his callous and unwelcoming wife. Now, years later, she attempts to understand the splinters her fractured childhood have left in her. Who were these three fathers? What did they leave her with?
