There’s a scary intensity in the way she looks at me. The intensity of a secret long kept.

“It’s not true,” she denies, automatic. “Who told you this?”

After I walked Seu Romário back home to make sure he was okay after crying so much, he asked me to forget everything he’d said. He tried to backpedal, saying he considered Dad a godson, not that he was his godson, but I know what he told me at the cemetery was true.

What I don’t know is why I’m the last person to find out my own father was practically a Molina.

“It doesn’t matter who did. And you don’t need to deny it.” I take a step closer to Mom. “It’s okay. You can tell me the truth.”

Mom balls her hands into tight fists over the counter, her knuckles going white. “I thought I was protecting you,” she says with a gasp, finally giving in. “Seu Romário has always been manipulative. He had asked your father if he’d like to be his godson, knowing very well Gabriel had no family left in the world. Made him feel like he was being adopted. All manipulation to make Gabriel feel morally obligated to Sugar forever, of course.”

So it is true. I should be angry. But strangely, I feel an immense sense of relief hearing the truth about Dad’s past with the Molinas. I realize it’s because Mom and I—

We’re talking with each other. Finally.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to grow up thinking that your dad was the enemy, too!”

“Dad would never have been the enemy to me. He could have had the Molina last name, and I wouldn’t care. He’s my father. I’d love him just the same.”

Mom breaks down sobbing, her arms wrapped around herself. “I needed to protect his memory,” she says, hyperventilating. “You say you’d still love him, but my own—my own mother saw him as a Molina! And you don’t know how much suffering he and I went through because of it! I had—Larissa, I had to make sure there was no room for you to have the same doubts—any doubts—about your father.”

My stomach churns.

“Grandma didn’t like Dad?” My voice comes out so quiet with shock I’m surprised Mom hears it.

She nods, her eyes bright with tears. “She saw him as one of them. For a long time, she hated Gabriel.”

This is too much. “W-why?”