“If my family ever finds out Marisela’s a full Colonel, they will never stop comparing me to her.

It’s better for everyone if they just keep thinking I’m the one providing everything.”

Coraline’s superior little smile was entirely gone.

Bruna was staring at her brother with open contempt.

It was a small thing, that shift in the two sisters, but Marisela caught it and understood it for what it was.

Coraline and Bruna had spent two years as their mother’s chorus — echoing her little cruelties, laughing on cue, treating Marisela as a project the family was tolerating rather than a person who had married in.