But it was her parting shot, delivered as she rose to leave, that changed the temperature in me from cold amusement to something harder.

“By the way,” Claudia said, pausing at the door, “this weekend the three of us are taking the baby to visit your parents’ memorial.

Alejandro wants to introduce us — his new family — at their headstone.

Isn’t that sweet?”

My parents were the two people I had loved most completely and lost most painfully in my life.

My father, who built everything from nothing; my mother, who taught me every gentle thing I knew.