Jaslene plucks a spoon from the dishwashing rack, dips it into the picadillo, and presents it to me. I open my mouth, but before I can snag a taste, Lina lowers Jaslene’s outstretched hand.

My eyes snap up to my cousin’s. “What?”

“I’ll repeat my question: Want to fill us in?”

Jaslene sets the spoon down and claps. “Oh, bring on the bochinche.”

“No, no, no,” I say, shaking my head. “We’re not gossiping about what should remain between Dean and me. All I’m going to say is that we went beyond the fake part, then decided we wouldn’t work as a real couple.”

Natalia appears at the foot of the stairs, just a few feet away. “Wait. You and Dean stopped pretending and hooked up for real? Why am I just hearing about this?”

Until now, my mother and aunts have been chatting with one another, seemingly oblivious to my conversation with Lina and Jaslene. But Natalia’s big mouth alerts them that there’s a more interesting discussion to be had. I know this because their voices grow quieter—so they can talk among themselves and listen to us at the same time. Latinx mothers have superhuman hearing that can detect both gossip and children behaving badly at vast distances and beyond concrete walls.

Unsurprisingly, the migration begins soon thereafter. Tia Viviane drifts over and pretends to be looking for something. Tia Mariana offers to roll out the dough for the empanadas. My mother locates the cleaning wipes and focuses on ridding the counters of crumbs.

“I’m not doing this with y’all,” I say, unable to temper the exasperation in my voice.

The tias glance at each other, then, as if they’re some sort of Brazilian outpost of the Avengers team, they assemble in the living room and motion for me to join them. This is an interrogation—and an intervention, possibly.

My gaze bounces between my mother and her sisters.

“You don’t look happy, filha,” Tia Viviane says. “Do we need to hurt Dean?”

It warms my heart that she cares. Truly. I couldn’t ask for a better support network than these women. Add in my cousins, who learned their “família primeiro” mantra from the sisters, and I’m blessed with all the backup any person could ever need.

“No need to inflict bodily harm on Dean,” I tell them.

Tia Mariana paces in front of the sofa as she studies me, her head tilted and her lips pursed. It’s not difficult to guess where Lina gets her detective skills from. “Then what’s going on?”