My own parents were there.

My in-laws, Teresa and Joaquin, were there.

And he was there, at the center of it, and spread across the coffee table where everyone could see them were papers I recognized with a lurch of my stomach: copies of my old therapy notes from 2020, the records of the months when my grief had been at its worst, when I had barely slept, when the counselor had written words like severe insomnia and complicated bereavement.

“I’m worried about Mariana,” he was saying as I came in, his voice thick with a concern so perfectly performed that for a moment even I almost believed it.