Parents aren’t supposed to have favorites, but they are human, after all, subject to the same flaws and foibles as the rest of us. I have always been my father’s favorite, an unspoken understanding existing between us that I could push him further than the rest of my siblings, test the limits of his patience—much like my mother had her favorite. The storm has been building for a long time, simmering in my family, the air crackling with it as we all dance around the one subject we cannot bear to speak of— “Alejandro might be alive—” I know what’s coming, cannot guard myself from the blow and
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