Manuel García never expected that the quietest chapter of his life would begin behind the wheel of a yellow school bus. At sixty-two, after four decades as a mechanic in a Vallecas garage and two years of wandering through the empty rooms of his home after his wife’s death, he thought he had already lived all the stories life had to offer him.

The school bus job came almost by accident—a neighbor mentioned it, the pay was modest, the hours were steady, and Manuel discovered that the rumble of the engine beneath him and the daily chatter of children soothed something inside him he thought was beyond repair. Every morning, he greeted the same faces, listened to the same jokes, watched the same siblings bicker and make up three times before the first stop.

It was the kind of predictable chaos that kept a man grounded. Instead, she folded herself small, her face turned toward the window. And every afternoon, after most students had already spilled out into clusters of backpacks and sneakers at their stops, Manuel would hear her stifled sobs—soft at first, then frantic, as if she were trying to erase the sound before it reached his ears.