"She knows," Rosario frowned. They'd all known, all three parental figures in her life, and they'd kept it from her. What did it mean that they'd lie about something that big?
We wanted you to be happy, her mom had said, while Rosario, unable to hold her tear-filled gaze, had stared dumbly at her white-knuckled hands, watched her twist the ring this way and that. That was all, Charo. We never wanted you to feel different. Cuz you're not, okay? You're our baby girl.
But she was different.
Grandma Olga saw it. All those biting little comments over the years, pitched so innocently to disguise the venom— how little she resembled Marcos. What a shame it was she'd got her mom's nappy hair, and god knows where she'd picked up that attitude because it certainly hadn't been their side of the family, and yeah Grandma Olga was a bitch who hated Ma for stealing her baby boy away but she hadn't even known and she'd still managed to hit on it and what did that say? Did it say anything?
Or how about Camino (not her sister, her half-sister), calling her stuck-up, weird, she thinks she's too good for the rest of us— the same thing she'd heard in middle school, in high school, as though they'd all sensed it—
Rosario realised she'd stopped pacing at the exact moment that the sob forced its way free and her vision blurred over with hot tears.