My grandma spent $30,000 to join our family’s Europe trip. But at the airport, my dad said, ‘I forgot your ticket—just go home.’ The way everyone avoided her eyes told me it wasn’t an accident. I stayed with her. Three weeks later, my parents came back—and the whole family froze, like they were holding their breath, when they saw me standing beside a man. Because…

“How are you, Mom? Eating okay? Taking your vitamins? I’ve been thinking about you,” he’d say, pacing the kitchen with the cordless phone in hand while I pretended to do homework at the table.

For the first time in years, Aunt Paula’s name started popping up more too. She called my grandmother from her spacious home in Peachtree City, Georgia, sending photos of the stylish scarf she’d bought in some upscale mall and a pair of designer sunglasses she thought Grandma might “like to see.”

My grandmother smiled when she talked about these calls, but every time, there was that flicker in her eyes. A tiny shadow, as if she couldn’t quite believe this sudden rush of attention.

One weekend the whole family descended on Tuloma like a traveling show: my parents, Aunt Paula, Uncle Leon, and my cousins Isabelle and James.

They rolled their suitcases across the gravel and into my grandmother’s small wooden house, filling it with perfume, cologne, and the faint chemical smell of dry-cleaned fabric. Their car—Leon’s pride and joy—sat in front of the house, gleaming under the Southern sun, a shiny black SUV with leather seats and a chrome grille.