“She’ll have her turn, don’t you worry,” Tía says. “Right now is your turn.” I roll my eyes, grateful she can’t see me. “We have to look after each other.” Her tone is softer now, heavier.

It pulls me to the cold tile of the bathroom floor. I put my back up to the door, tucking my knees to my chest.

“Marisa needed you to look after her tonight,” she continues. “Who will look after you when you are far away? Who will you call? You need your family, Juniper.” The bite is gone from her words, replaced entirely by the gentle persuasiveness of a person who believes wholly in what she is saying.

“I have to find myself,” I plead, feeling the enormous inertia of this conversation, the weight of having fought this exact fight with Tía tens, even hundreds of times before. Tears well in my eyes, partly because it’s nearly three in the morning and I’m curled on the floor of a hotel bathroom, and partly because I know how this conversation will end. For all Tía preaches about family, she never even tries to be the great-aunt I need. To encourage and respect my choices and the life I want. The futility and the loneliness overwhelm me.

“I know who you are,” Tía tells me. “You’re Marisa’s older sister. You’re the girl who did her homework in the restaurant while her father cooked enchiladas, the girl who taught her brothers long division when they needed help in school. The girl who cut out paper angels to decorate her abuela’s room after she was gone. You’re a Ramírez. You don’t need to find yourself because you’re not lost, niña. You can never be lost if you have your home and your family.”

The tears in my eyes burn, fury flushing into my cheeks. “You know, I used to wonder why my dad moved to New York. Why he married a woman none of you had ever met. Why he didn’t come home for eight years,” I say, fuming. “Now I understand. The only way to have even the smallest stretch of freedom from this family is to leave completely. Don’t make me do it too.”

Icy stillness settles over the line. I know I’ve said outright what I’ve only hinted and half expressed for months. “Do you need to be reminded of what happened the second time your father tried to leave his family?”

The question knocks the wind out of me. It’s cruel of Tía to use those memories like weapons, to turn them on me. It’s unnecessary—my parents and I never need reminding of this guilt.

My parents had moved our family to Springfield to help run the restaurant while Abuela had heart problems. We’d been living there for six months when my dad found permanent help to take over, lightening the load for Tía and Abuela and giving my parents the chance to move back to New York. When they brought Tía and Abuela together to tell them, they weren’t expecting their stunned indignation. They’d thought we’d moved to Springfield for good. It turned into a huge fight, and the stress pushed Abuela’s heart too far. It was the night she died.

Tía blames us for it. Not that my father doesn’t blame himself enough on his own. As long as my parents run Abuela’s restaurant and live in her house, they will be reminded of the costs of trying to move on. Of being selfish.

I hang up the phone.

I don’t need to hear Tía’s guilt trip. I refuse to buy into it like the rest of my family. Fights happen in families, and it’s no one’s fault. Abuela died because she had a bad heart. Not because my father helped her and then tried to leave. Tía may try to convince me otherwise. She may even believe that my going away to college could set us on a course to another family tragedy.

I refuse to give ground to her accusations, to allow my abuela’s death be used against me. I won’t have something in the past dictate my future.

I put my phone on silent and return to bed, pretending it doesn’t matter to me if I have Tía’s support.

Maybe one day, that’ll be true.

   Fitz

OUR CONVERSATION ON the Wesleyan campus continued to thaw the weirdness between Lewis and me. On the drive to New York City the next morning, I mention the Red Sox, and we pretty quickly delve into preseason hopes and predictions. In a way, it’s brotherly, this banal banter. But I remind myself we’re not discussing the real, fundamental things I don’t know—what jobs he’s interviewing for, where he’ll probably live next year. Mom.

We take the scenic route toward Manhattan, where I’m touring NYU this afternoon. The interstate winds down the coast, the view breathtaking. The water glitters in the midday sun, flashes of light flickering from the waves.

I end up taking ten or fifteen photos on my phone, compiling my favorites into a text to Mom, who’s thrilled, of course. Any indication I might be enjoying the trip is undoubtedly cause for celebration. She recognizes the entrance to Southport Beach from a trip she took with her college roommates during her freshman year. They rented a tiny house with a white picket fence, went for ice cream in town, and one of her friends had a weekend-long fling with a local lifeguard—that part I didn’t need to know. But I’m quietly reassured she remembers the trip in detail.

We pass the sign for Sherwood Island State Park. Lewis slows down and glances over to me. There’s a familiar gleam in his eyes. “How much do you care about making your NYU tour?” he asks.

I imagine the desultory hour I’ll spend listening to the NYU presenter spinning off facts and figures irrelevant to me. Then I imagine watching the horizon over the water, passing the hour in the winter sun instead. “Not at all,” I say.

“Okay,” he says, looking decidedly pleased. “If we’re doing this, we’re going to need food.”

We continue on the turnpike to the sandwich shop and market I found on Google Maps. It’s perfectly Connecticut, with pale blue clapboard and bright red benches. While Lewis waits in the car, I pick up two BLTs, and then we head back in the direction of the beach.

We follow the grassy drive past trees and into the parking lot. When we get out, wind buffeting our faces, the water is right in front of us. The grass gives way to sand in a gentle slope down to the shore.

I watch the waves roll in. It’s different from the other times I’ve visited the beach, which were in the wrong contexts for reflection or concentration. Outings with friends, full of plans and preparations and constant conversation. Field trips for state geography units in school. Chaperoning a kindergarten camp for my community service requirement in health class freshman year. They weren’t exactly restful experiences. The beach in winter is nothing like it is in warmer temperatures, either. For one thing, I don’t have to apply SPF 60 every half hour—a necessity for gingers in summer. With the weather frigid and the sand wet, there’s no onslaught of tourists to break the quiet with rattling beach chairs and the commotion of water games.