She sold everything so her sons could earn their wings — and twenty years later, they came back in pilot uniforms to take her somewhere she had never even dared to imagine.

Doña Teresa was fifty-six, a widow long before she was ready to be one.

Her world revolved around her only two children, Marco and Paolo. They lived on the outskirts of Toluca in a modest neighborhood where houses leaned into each other like tired shoulders. Their home had unfinished walls and a tin roof that rattled during storms — built brick by brick alongside her husband, who worked construction jobs wherever he could find them.