The village cemetery lay quiet in the pale embrace of dawn, where the early sun cast long shadows across rows of modest gravestones, each bearing nothing more than crudely scratched names and dates. No skilled hands had etched these marks; they were carved by villagers who knew more of earth and toil than art. One stone, younger than the rest and not yet worn smooth by years of wind and rain, lay under the careful attentions of a man nearing his fifties.

Carlos—recently widowed, with only on...