“One-time Alpine skiing champion? No? Nothing? Didn’t make the news where you were, I guess. Well, I told you that I had to stop skiing because I got injured, and that’s true. But I didn’t tell you why I got injured, or why I decided not to just rehab and keep going, which believe me, I want more than anything in the world to do. But my mental game is shot, probably forever at this point. And that’s because of something that happened nowhere near the mountain. Would you like to guess?” I ask, vaguely aware that I’m wildly overreacting but so filled with a righteous rage that I can’t stop. Suddenly, all I can see are Gemma’s lies, the charm, the manipulative veneer—I’m not talking to her anymore, I’m talking to Penny. She shakes her head. “My sister, Penny Cleary-Granger, is one of the most infamous women in America, Gemma. A year and a half ago, while I was on a flight home, she murdered her daughter. And what’s more, she was acquitted. So I’m afraid Worst Mother in the World is a title that’s already been claimed.”

Liz Gets the Full Story

THE NEXT day, Cali asks me to meet her at Recoleta Cemetery. Amazingly, she’s never been. We get large coffees to take with us, and for a while we quietly stroll and make small talk: commenting on the briskness of the day and the beauty of the extraordinary cemetery with its vast marble mausoleums built side by side like a small city, with narrow cobblestone corridors running in between. We pass Evita’s grave, and though it’s relatively nondescript, it’s surrounded by a clutch of tourists snapping photos.

“Huh,” Cali says, as we stand there for a minute before moving on. “It’s kind of the Mona Lisa of this place. All hype.”

“Come on, I’ll show you one of my favorites,” I say, and a few minutes later, we approach the family pantheon of Dorrego-Ortiz Basualdo.

“This is more like it,” Cali says, taking in the ornate candelabra with the sculpted marble woman beside it. “This looks like a nice place to live, let alone be dead in.”

For a moment, we’re quiet.

“So . . .” Cali says. “Are we going to talk about last night or nah?”

I smile and shake my head. “Gemma.”

“She was really upset after you left,” Cali says. After my tirade, I’d stormed out and gone home alone with my righteous indignation.

“She hit a nerve. A few different nerves, actually.”

“But you hadn’t told her any of that, had you?”

I shake my head.

“God, I must have sounded deranged.”

“Only a little.” She smiles.

“I just . . . I guess I find it hard to be sympathetic to someone who’s in a mess of her own making.”