“What?”

“She said you wanted me there, but you didn’t want to ask because you knew I was uncomfortable with her.

She said maybe someday we’d learn to get along.”

“I told her to tell you I was proud of you and that I understood.”

Valerie swallowed.

“She didn’t say that.”

The hurt in my daughter’s face gave me a glimpse of what Leticia had been doing for months: passing messages back and forth, carefully changing the meaning of each one.

I had told myself their relationship was awkward because Valerie still missed her mother.