And in the freezing late-afternoon numbness of the gray station, full of whistles and the smell of coffee drifting across the terminal, a small, cross figure was hoisting up a backpack on her shoulders and staring upward mutinously.

“Oh, you don’t have to get a cab, it’s hardly any distance,” Sofia had texted, but it turned out if you had to walk uphill constantly and it was a howling gale, it did feel like a big, gigantic, ginormous distance.

First off, from the top of the wind-strewn staircase leading from the station, the city rose around her, but Carmen barely noticed it for the thousands of tourists in front of her taking up all the space with their huge backpacks. She’d been to the city before, of course, on school trips or up to the festival, but she didn’t know it well. As she shoved her way up, head down against the wind, the first thing she saw was a huge outdoor bar propped right in front of the station, with a live band and twinkly lights all around it.

Farther on, leading into the darkening evening, was a winter funfair as far as the eye could see, as well as stalls selling sausages, mulled wine, hot chocolate, and schnapps. Obviously they started early around here.

People were everywhere: little children, eyes wide, in their light-up sneakers; teenagers laughing and shoving each other; young girls in sleeveless tops and short skirts, oblivious to the weather. Carmen noticed none of it, blindly following the map on her phone and trying not to get run over by what, to her shock when she glanced up, turned out to be a tram dinging angrily at her.

They have trams? she thought, jumping back. Who knew?

She remembered once again her parents’ strained looks of disappointment as her mother had let slip, as kindly as she was able, that her sister’s law firm handled the affairs of someone who had a shop and was looking for some seasonal help.

“You let Sofia find me a job?” said Carmen, distraught.

She had been quite capable of looking for a job herself. Okay, she had also been doing quite a lot of doomscrolling and watching Netflix and reading all the Anne of Green Gables books again, but that was just self-care and she was grieving for the loss of the job and the life she’d had, and why wasn’t that okay?

“So Sofia knows best again?”

Her mother and father looked at each other.

“She’s just trying to help,” said her mother.

“She’s just showing off. What if I hate it?”

Carmen was aware she was being a brat, sitting at home, getting her laundry done and her meals cooked, and her father—her gentle father, who almost never reproached his girls—nonetheless looked up from over his crossword and raised his eyebrows.