Two days later, at seventeen minutes past eight in the morning, Theresa called me, screaming.

“Mariana!

The bank says the house payment bounced!

Transfer the thirty-two hundred dollars right now!”

I took a slow, unhurried sip of my morning coffee.

And then I gave my mother-in-law back her own words, the exact ones she had spoken to me across a table piled high with food she had made me pay for.

“I’m sorry, Theresa,” I said.

“My budget for you ran out.”