At my graduation, while everyone was toasting my sister, I heard my father laugh: “Let’s see if she finds something she’s actually good at now.” I was still wearing my gown while the room applauded.

to benefiting from them.”

Lucía looked at her for a long moment.

“We were children, Clara.”

It was the first sentence either of them had said that separated guilt from responsibility.

But their parents still weren’t finished.

Clara had originally been sent to Barcelona because the family’s finances were collapsing again.

Their parents assumed Lucía still lived modestly and might have accumulated some savings.

They hoped to “repair the relationship” before asking her for money.

What they didn’t know was that Lucía was no longer a struggling freelance editor.

Five