“Are you kidding me?” Each syllable strained against the others unnaturally.

Jeanette waved a hand in front of her face as if to say It’s nothing, don’t worry. “He’s sober now too, Mom. It’s completely different. And we’re not, like, together. He’s being a really good friend.”

Jeanette looked away. Her eyes darted, seemed to take in the whole room, all the clusters of conversation.

“Anyways, it’s not like you can judge.”

That familiar sharp, stabbing pain. Carmen wanted to say something back. But she couldn’t.

Jeanette looked sober, though, Carmen thought. Her curls were neatly moussed and bouncy; she wore fresh, precise makeup. Carmen would’ve preferred she wear something a little more celebratory than jeans and a tight-fitting tank top but she couldn’t deny that, in her late twenties, Jeanette could pull off looking good in almost anything. Still, she seemed distracted, jumping from conversation to conversation, ducking each time talk turned toward her. Carmen stood on the margin, gripping a glass of fruit juice, afraid to approach her daughter as if she’d catch a whiff of some hidden sorrow if she got too close. Could this be all there was to it—Jeanette would get sober? Mario too? Life would continue as if the past five years had happened to someone else?

And there was the other fact keeping Carmen hyper-perceptive—she couldn’t shake the noise, the guttural growl; she couldn’t shake the blood. She found herself losing the thread of conversations and turning toward her living room window, her guests trailing off. And then she’d turn back to that person, an aunt or a cousin or their spouse: You were saying?

But then Rosalinda’s husband, Pepe, had pulled a flask out of his back pocket and poured its contents into a water glass. Carmen saw him do it. She had set the table without wine stems or highballs. She’d set the table with only water glasses. Carmen sidled up to Pepe, made a show of staring at the glass in his hand.

“You’re looking younger, Carmen,” he said. Pepe leaned a hand on her mahogany side table. “You’re looking more like Jeanette.” He took a sip. “Me, I just get older. I was never one to coddle my Vanessa, you know. That’s probably what keeps you young. When you don’t coddle them, it’s stressful. But it’s better not to coddle, it’s definitely better.”

Pepe’s slender wiry daughter appeared as if on cue, whisking the glass out of his hand and taking a sip herself. “I heard that,” she said.

“Now, Papi.” Vanessa smiled at Carmen. She’d left a dark-red lipstick ring on the glass. “Everyone knows you’re the world’s biggest coddler. Tía, come.” She took Carmen by the arm as if leading a child.