Adelina finally arrives at her mother’s village with the box of her father’s ashes. As she gets off the bus, she sees one of the passengers run to his mother and realizes she recognizes the older woman.

Adelina remembers the time Sebastian brought her to his mother’s sixtieth birthday party and introduced her to his family. Seeing Sebastian’s childhood home and meeting his family makes Adelina realize she can never tell Sebastian the truth about her own past. Because of this, Adelina ended her relationship with Sebastian.

After four weeks of living with Adelina, Juana decides to begin work as a prostitute, in order to get close enough to the coyotes to ask them about her father. Adelina helps Juana put on makeup and a tight dress. Juana meets her first client, one of the most popular coyotes in the area, at a hotel, but he tells her that he’s helped so many men cross the border, he wouldn’t know if one of them was her father. Later, Adelina says there must be something that makes Juana’s father unique, and Juana remembers Apá’s white rosary with heart-shaped beads.

Adelina’s boyfriend, Gerardo, often comes over to the apartment. Gerardo is violent and rude to Adelina, but Adelina insists that she is in love with him and one day he will change. Meanwhile, Juana continues to sleep with coyotes and wander around Tijuana, searching for her father.

On Juana’s fifteenth birthday, she, Adelina, and the other women go to the beach, where Juana tries lobster for the first time. Juana remembers how her mother always wanted to visit the ocean, but now never would.

One night, Gerardo comes over when Adelina isn’t home and rapes Juana. Later, Juana tells Adelina that she must get away from the apartment and from Tijuana, and that she has decided to try to cross the border and search for her father there. Adelina still has her American birth certificate and says she will consider joining Juana in the United States.

Juana meets a coyote, along with one other woman and four men. The group walks for several hours through cacti, shrubs, and wild grass. Juana notices the other woman start to fall behind, and the men tell both women to keep up. They come across a dead body in the bushes, and the coyote explains that some coyotes lie to people, only to kill them and take their money. The group continues walking, often hiding in the bushes or splitting into smaller groups to hide from “la migra,” the immigration police. Finally, they must crawl through a tunnel that will take them to the other side of the border. When Juana emerges from the tunnel, “la migra” captures them and sends them back to Mexico.