My sister fainted on my husband’s coffin and everyone said it was “empathy.” When I checked the life insurance, I discovered her son had his last name.

I paid for my nephew’s education and my sister’s rent for six years, thinking I was just being the generous aunt. Turns out, I was supporting my husband’s second family, with the silent blessing of my parents, who preferred to play me for a fool rather than lose their own comfort.

The day we buried Roberto, it was raining buckets. It seemed the sky understood my pain, even if no one else did.

I, Daniela, stood in front of the open grave, rigid, holding a black umbrella in one hand and my dignity in the other. Roberto had died of a massive heart attack at 42. He had collapsed during a “business trip” at the beach.

Beside me, my younger sister, Camila, was screaming and crying. She threw herself on the ground, hugged the wood of the coffin, and shrieked Roberto’s name with a desperation that made everyone uncomfortable.

“Poor thing,” my mother, Elena, whispered, stroking Camila’s back. “She was always so sensitive. She loved Roberto like a big brother. Her pain is just pure empathy for you, daughter.”

I didn’t say anything. I was too busy trying to understand why my husband, the man I shared 15 years with, had sand in his shoes when they handed me his personal effects—if he was supposedly at a conference in the city.

The family dynamic had always been clear: I was the strong one, the provider, the successful architect who pulled the family out of the lower-middle class. Camila was the “problem child,” the misunderstood artist, the single mom who had her son, Gael, at 20 and never revealed who the father was.

“It was a youthful mistake,” my parents would say. “Gael doesn’t have a dad, but he has us.”

And above all, he had me.