Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 4

Five years later.Oregon rain tapped softly against the kitchen’s glass wall. Steady, cold, and mildly annoying.The pan on the stove hissed quietly, the smell of almost-done corn arepas mixing with black coffee and the chorizo I was frying in the skillet next to it. A slow Latin playlist floated from the speakers, the same old songs Mamá used to play in Bogotá every Sunday morning.The difference was, the view outside wasn’t a city full of honking cars and people yelling in Spanish, but foggy pine trees and expensive houses pretending they weren’t snobbish.This house sat on a hill in a private neighborhood near Lake Oswego, about thirty minutes from Portland. Papa called it “a quiet place for your stubborn brain, hija.”I called it “I got exiled to the woods with very good Wi-Fi.”“MAX, GIVE ME BACK MY CROWN!”So much for the calm, competent-young-mother-making-breakfast aesthetic. The scream split the air, high-pitched, dramatic, with a tiny accent that mixed English and a hint of

Five days in the Gómez house felt like being tossed into an industrial washing machine: spinning, loud, warm, and there was always someone shoving food at you even after you’d just said you were full.On day one, Mamá had already rearranged my entire schedule like I was back in eleventh grade and needed supervision so I wouldn’t run off and get married in secret. On day two, I gave up and let myself be dragged from hug to hug, from one “Arabellita, you’re too thin” to another “Arabellita, you work too much,” with a few seconds in between to breathe.Meanwhile, the twins lived like royalty.They came down the grand staircase in pajamas that had somehow transformed into “criminally cute” outfits, complete with shiny little shoes, and the entire Gómez family behaved like two four-year-olds had just stopped by from Hollywood to pick up empanadas.Fiona was the worst.My sister stood in the kitchen in a pretty apron, and every five minutes she found a new excuse to feed Issa a piece of fr