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“How are my favourite girls?” Her father kissed her mother, then Bea.

“We’re good. And ready for that champagne now,” Mamá said.

“Are we celebrating something?” Bea croaked, struggling to stay focused. She’d just confessed to her very upright mother that she and Casildo had been living together.

“Me confessing that Papá and I anticipated our wedding vows by quite a few months. When we had enough money to rent a garage, we stopped taking precautions. Our families insisted on marriage when I said I was pregnant.”

“They’d been against the idea until then,” her papá added, “and we had no place to go. We had to get a room first.” He signalled the waiter. “A bottle of your best champagne.” He smiled at her mother. “I didn’t know that’s what we were celebrating.”

“Beatriz has something to tell us. Her news might be better than ours.”

The waiter returned, popped the cork and poured three flutes of champagne, before discreetly disappearing.

Bea looked from her mamá to her papá’s faces. “Here goes. I’ll continue to make payments on the mortgage, but only the mortgage.” Her stomach was a mass of marauding elephants. She sucked in a breath and continued, “Lisa and Fran will have to start pulling their weight, maybe even get part-time jobs.”

“Stop.” Mamá passed Bea her flute. “Time for the first toast.”

“To the independence of all our daughters.” Papá waved his glass in her direction, seemingly indifferent to whether he spilled any or not. Like her mother, he was smiling.

“You don’t mind?” She read ecstasy rather than dismay on their faces.

“We’ve been making plans and didn’t want to tell you girls until we had them all worked out. It’s similar.” Her mother laughed. “We whisper and dream in bed. Some dreams we make come true, sometimes we fail, but this one we’ve landed.”

Her mother and father held up their glasses, smiled into each other’s eyes, and said, “Here’s to retirement.”

Bea bobbled her drink, some liquid trickling down her fingers.

“Don’t waste it, darling,” her mother said.

“Retirement?” She licked up the precious drops.

“We’ve been thinking about how to manage it for a while. We have small pension accounts and the house. A real estate agent approached us about the house.”

“What about Lisa and Fran?”

“Your sisters are our responsibility, not yours.” Her father leaned into her as he had so many times over the years, a slight nudge to comfort, to tell her he was on her side, to make a connection. “We’ve been working on the plan for a while. It’s not fair for you to continue to take on so much of the load.”

“It’s never been fair,” said Mamá. “Our families had the same expectations of us, so we accepted what you offered. You never complained. Not from the time you were a little girl and we asked you to look after your sisters. But your sisters don’t see it that way. They’re in a new country with different ways, and they claim independence for themselves.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

“As sure as we were that having you was the right decision; the best decision we ever made. You’re our baby and one of the finest people we know. Your help has made this moment possible. Time to seize life with both hands, darling. Take what you want for a change.”

Bea scrubbed away tears. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I hope you know what to do,” her mother teased.

“I’m so happy you can retire, Papá. I love you both.”

“Then go and tell your friend that you’re not going back to your parents, and you can afford your share of an apartment.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Does he love you?”

“I’m almost sure.”

But I can ask Anna to rent me her apartment. And I can ask Casildo to stay with me. Will he? Or have I killed whatever chance we had by not telling him the truth sooner?