Simona raised her eyebrows and shot her sister an angry look, letting her know just how much work she gave other people by being so little. Still, she couldn’t help feeling a little bitter.

Simona was tired too, but she was too big for her father to carry her.

The year was 1996. The girls were nine and six years old. Their father was twenty-nine, and unemployed.

Simona had to hurry to catch up. Her father’s strides grew even longer and faster. His jaw was clenched as he walked, or at least it looked that way from what she could see of him. He was nervous, thought Simona. But seeing him tense today didn’t make her sad like other times; instead, her chest filled with pride. It meant that her father cared about what was happening. And what was happening, what was about to happen, was her idea. She put her hand in the pocket of her dress and squeezed the ad and the map as if they were winning lottery tickets.

Her pride also stemmed from the satisfaction of knowing that she did understand what her father was feeling, and that her little sister didn’t. Simona was the one who had spent all those nights with her ear pressed to the wall, listening to her parents fight. And the next morning she would get out of bed to look up in the dictionary all the words they had said to each other that were new to her. Sometimes she even looked up ones she had heard before, but that in her opinion didn’t apply to her father: loser, coward, selfish.

Simona suffered, but at the same time she loved feeling part of the solemnity of adult conflicts. This was the kind of responsibility that came with the position of older sister.

Since summer vacation started, every morning was a long, grueling walk. Downtown, Providencia, Las Condes. All pretty places, clean and modern. Far away from the neighborhood where they lived. The father had lost his job a while ago, but with the girls home on summer vacation, he had no choice now but to take them with him when he went to drop off résumés or attend interviews. Their mother said they couldn’t be left alone. She used the word abandon: “You can’t abandon them in the house.”

At first the father had found it a nuisance. He saw it as his wife taking revenge on him—after all, she could have made more of an effort to find some old neighbor lady with time on her hands who could take care of the girls. Then he decided it wasn’t really such a bad idea. Maybe they would give him an advantage. If people saw him come in with two little girls in tow, maybe they’d take pity on him and give him the job.