“If it hurts you that much, then remember this: you were never really part of this family.”
My stepmother said it with a smile, a glass of wine in her hand, like she had just delivered the cleverest line at the table. I lifted my own glass and answered without even shaking.
“Great. Then stop asking me for money.”
Veronica’s smile disappeared at once.
My father, Rogelio, looked at us like the whole table had just collapsed. Around us, cousins, uncles, and even my stepbrother’s fiancée stopped eating. The smell of mole no longer felt warm or comforting.
My father’s birthday dinner, in his house in San Miguel de Allende, had suddenly become something far uglier.
It had been supposed to be a happy evening. My father was turning sixty-five, and Mauricio, Veronica’s son, had just announced during the toast that he and Ximena would be getting married in November. Everyone clapped.
Veronica, carried away by the wine and the attention, pulled out a beige folder and proudly announced that she and my father planned to put the vacation house in Valle de Bravo in Mauricio’s name, “to secure the inheritance for the next generation.”
Everyone loved the idea.
Everyone except me.
I set my fork down. “So they’re really giving Mauricio that house even though it’s already three months behind on payments, and Dad’s rehab from last year still isn’t fully paid?”
Ximena’s face immediately changed. Mauricio let out an irritated sigh, like I had ruined a moment he believed belonged to him.
Veronica folded her napkin with a calmness that felt practiced.
“That’s none of your concern,” she said.
“It becomes my concern every time you text me crying because supposedly you can’t keep up with the bills anymore.”
Mauricio leaned back in his chair. “Oh, Alma, don’t be dramatic. The lake house belongs to the family.”
I looked straight at him.
“Then pay for it with family money.”
That was when Veronica gave that short, poisonous laugh.
“Oh, please. You’re not even part of this family.”
The silence that followed was so dry I could hear the hum of the air conditioner.
For a second, I felt like I was fifteen again, realizing that in that house I had only ever occupied borrowed space. I was my father’s daughter from his first marriage.
Mauricio was the cherished son, the chosen one, the future. I was the one expected to be grateful just to have a chair at the table.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
