Page 2

"You look beautiful, as always," she says in that calm, measured tone Claudia remembers.

"Thank you, so do you," she answers nervously, at a loss for what to say.

Time has cooled the relationship between them, and neither one knows quite how to act. Elvira would like to hug her—there are fewer years between them than between her and her sister Blanca, and she always felt far more at ease with Claudia than with her—but now she feels as though she doesn't really know her. All she knows is that her niece, apparently, is a thirty-four-year-old woman who only thinks about going out and having a good time, an irresponsible girl who drives her parents crazy and the reason they're all here today. But when she looks into Claudia's eyes, she still sees the same kindness that was there when she used to visit as a child. What's gone, though, is that curious expression she used to have.

"Come on, sit down," says her aunt, who wants to get through this awkward moment as fast as possible.

Elvira sits at the far end of the table and is surprised when Claudia takes a seat in the middle—far from her, but also far from her parents.

"Let's get started—I'm sure Elvira has things to do," Enric urges, nodding at the lawyer.

The man opens his briefcase and pulls out four stapled sets of documents, which he hands around the table: one in front of Elvira, one for Claudia, one for her parents, and the last one he keeps for himself.

"Can someone finally tell me what this is about?" Claudia asks without looking at the papers.

She has taken off her coat and left it folded over the chair beside her, and she sits with one leg crossed over the other, an ease that makes her look entirely out of place.

"Last year you spent forty-five thousand euros on the card your mother and I gave you for your expenses," her father begins, reading from a separate sheet the lawyer has handed him. "Of that, almost twenty thousand between July and August alone."

"So? That's what it's for, isn't it?" she asks with barely concealed irritation, starting to understand that this is nothing more than another lecture from her parents. What she can't figure out yet is why her aunt and the family lawyer need to be present for it.

"It's for that, as long as you exercise some restraint, show some responsibility, and show some respect for this family."

Claudia tightens her jaw and says nothing, though what she'd actually like to tell him is that respect ought to go both ways.

"You're thirty-four years old, Claudia, old enough to have gotten your act together by now. You should be in the position that belongs to you at the Barcelona offices, helping this company grow and keeping the Vidal name worth something, but all you're doing is dragging it through the mud."

Elvira turns her pen over and over in her fingers, her gaze moving between her niece and this man she detests a little more with every passing minute.

"In October you were detained at a venue on Muntaner Street because of some stupid brawl," her father reads, as if he needs to remind himself of the location.

"It was clear I wasn't involved, I was just there—" she tries to defend herself, but he doesn't let her.

"You shouldn't have been there in the first place, that's the whole problem with you. It was a Tuesday night. You should have been home resting so you could come in to work the next day, but instead—"

"Let it go, Enric, we don't need the details," her mother cuts in, and Elvira clicks her tongue, because she knows this isn't to help her daughter—it's to keep herself from feeling humiliated.

"In November you didn't show up to the company anniversary dinner," he continues. "In January you didn't come to the spring presentation either."

Claudia looks at him without any idea what he expects her to say.

"And that's not even mentioning that damned photograph someone took of you in the middle of the night at some dive bar with that woman."

"She wasn't some woman, she was—" she starts, angry, but her father cuts her off again.

"It doesn't matter who she was. This family spent close to twenty thousand euros to have it pulled from that ridiculous website. The point is that since you finished your degree, there hasn't been a single full week where you came in every day, and when you do grace us with your presence, you're late on top of it."

Claudia stares at the table, her hands pressed hard against the armrests. She wants to scream and remind him that the girl in the photo is a friend she sometimes has something with—not a stranger, and certainly not "some woman"—and that she had loved seeing the picture posted on a site celebrating lesbian representation. But she bites her tongue, because she's had this argument many times and it always ends the same way: her father shouting, her mother red with embarrassment, and herself leaving whatever room they're in mid-panic attack. She doesn't want that today, not with her aunt sitting right there.

"We've never asked anything of you, Claudia," her mother steps in, and Claudia's eyes snap up. "We've given you the freedom to do whatever you wanted. You spent a year in London after your degree, we gave you a low-responsibility position so you wouldn't feel overwhelmed and could ease in gradually, but time keeps passing and your place isn't there anymore. You're a Vidal, and it's time you took your seat in leadership."

"I don't want to be in leadership."

"That's another one of your problems," her father says again. "You never want anything, and yet you do want that card so you can keep living this derailed life of yours. That ends today."

Claudia frowns.

"What do you mean?"