She had died, in a sense, on the pavement behind that supermarket, and the woman who stood up from it was someone they had never met and could not manage.

“Please, Daniela,” my father begged, as I turned toward the door.

“We are your family.”

I stopped, my hand on the doorknob, and looked back at them over my shoulder.

“Family isn’t a word you pull out when you run out of money,” I said.

“Family is what you protect when someone is defenseless.

You had your chance to be my family.

And you chose to laugh.” And I walked out, and I did not look back, and I never gave them a single cent, and I never saw or spoke to either of them again.