At the massive, open-air pulga, a man could get his car windows tinted, save his eternal soul, and lose it again—all in one place—while a soundtrack of Ranchero and reggaeton blared from every stall. Jared didn’t need snakeskin boots or chicharrones. But he’d pay anything to see his daughter again.

    A tapestry depicting St. Anthony hung in the gap between a discount lingerie stand and a wooden table selling Veladoras.

    “Lost things,” Jared muttered, his eyelid twitching like the flickering fluorescents that bathed the night in pale white. “Clever.”

    Behind the saint, Jared discovered a room in the space between storefronts. A patchwork ceiling of translucent sheets hung low overhead. A haloed gibbous moon shone through the fabric, illuminating the ground in rose-tinted sanctity. Plywood walls—the backs of shops—sheltered the space from all but muffled bumps of bass, the way a sliding glass door once protected Jared and Samantha from the booms and rushes of a thunderstorm as they watched it rage outside.

    “Buenas noches.” A voice scraped into the room like a güiro.

    “I’m looking—”

    “Ya lo sé. You lost your daughter. Que lástima, Mijo. Pero, you are in the right place.”

    A woman limped from a dark corner. A twisted cane, no more gnarled than the fingers that gripped it, dug into the uneven floor. Moonlight half-lit a weathered countenance filled with craft and pity. 

    “You know el precio?” she said.

    “Yes. For every moment I look into the ball, a memory.”

    The woman offered a grave nod.

    “Sientate.”

    She reached into a satchel, producing a glass ball, clutched by ancient hands. 

    “¿Seguro? No refunds.”

    “I’ll do anything.”

    “Ya lo sé. Okay. It’s simple. You look, you see, you forget, but you learn what you want to know.”

    Jared extended his hands to receive the orb.

    Concern for what he was about to lose was eclipsed by fear for what he could lose otherwise.     He gazed into the ball.

    Like water from a tap, the first memory flowed out of him. 

    A baby daughter’s birth. 

    Tears, screams, blood, sweat, and the joy of a newborn. 

    Love.

    Relief. 

    Then, it disappeared. In its place, his daughter, grown—as he’d seen her last—with a man he’d never met.

    He jerked his attention away, ending the vision.

    “Enough?”

    Jared sensed something missing but couldn’t say what. He hadn’t seen enough to find his daughter. Resolved, his focus returned to the ball.

    An infant giggled in Jared’s arms—the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Then blackness, followed by another clue—a house, a door, but inside…dark. 

    Piece by piece, the ball revealed details, more each time. In turn, it took its payment. First steps. “Daddy.” Piano recitals. Christmas. Laughter. As street signs and faces entered his mind, out flowed bike rides and butterfly wonderland. 

    He didn’t look up until he knew where to find her.

    When he did, the woman was gone.

    Jared left the ball on the table, returned to the night, and set off to save the young woman in his vision. 

    Whoever she was.