I was aware Inês had died. Rose opens up about that, too, but it’s only now I’m realizing it was the same summer Pearl booked us all on a trip to Bora Bora.
While Rose talks, it comes back to me in sharp, jagged pieces. Pearl telling us Roger had bailed on their trip—a planned graduation present—to take Rose and her mother vacationing in Europe instead.
That’s what convinced us all to book the trip, as a way to make Pearl feel better. She said her dad took her sistervacationing, and ditched her.
Rose says quietly, “It was my mother’s final wish.”
I say nothing for a second. Why the fuck would Pearl tell us they ditched her to go on vacation when Rose’s mother was actually dying?
This trip has taught me a lot about my good friend, and none of it is sitting well—but I can also see the memory pulling Rose under, and she doesn’t need to watch me work through these revelations right now. All these little things about Pearl, finally hearing Rose’s version of events… about Easton, about their dad, about this trip… it’s all accumulating, and I’m not sure what to do with it, so I change the subject.
I clear my throat. “Have you been back? To Portugal, I mean?”
“No.” She picks at her hem. “I keep telling myself it’s not the right time, but honestly… I just don’t want to show up and not be able to talk to anyone. Mytiasdon’t really speak English. My cousins do—most of them, my age or younger—but my Portuguese is terrible. Mom spoke it all the time, around the house, but she never actually sat down and taught me. Or maybe I was just too lazy to learn.” She pauses. “I regret it now.”
“There are apps. Duolingo, whatever.”
She makes a face. “I’ve tried. It doesn’t stick. My brain doesn’t work like that. I don’t take to languages naturally, and it’s actually a genuinely hard language to learn.”
“But you speak some, right? I mean, when you pronounce things—”
“Oh, my pronunciations are on point.Rosaria Margarida Lopes,” she says her name with a flourish, the first R in Rosaria catching in the back of her throat. “Eu falo português muito devagar e não muito bom.”
“I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded great.”
“I speak slowly and not very well.” She giggles, and that sound is almost as good as her big laugh. “My mom spoke five languages. It’s hard to live up to.”
“Is that something you need to live up to?”
“No. I’ve made peace with it.” She pauses. “She would have been proud of me, I think. What I’m trying to do with my life. Well—maybe not what I’m currently doing. My business did tank.” She laughs a little. “But the intention, at least. Even if I don’t speak five languages.”
She’s mentioned her business a few times now. Given everything Pearl’s lied about, I’m hesitant to ask. But I side-eye her enough that she must realize I want to.
“You know what I went to school for?”
I shake my head. I’m trying to remember—something about exercise, maybe? I feel like an ass. Rose knows about my family,my work, my education. I’m realizing I don’t actually know much about her at all.
“Well, I went to school to study herbal medicine. And then I got into nutrition and became a certified nutrition specialist. I knew I wanted to study holistic medicine. Western biomedicine just wasn’t for me.” She says it carefully, like she’s bracing for me to dismiss it.
I say, “Nutrition is extremely important. I see it every day—what diet and exercise alone can do for heart health. A lot of what ends up on my table could have been prevented earlier with the right lifestyle changes. Not everything,” I say pointedly, “but a lot.”
“Exactly!” She relaxes a little. “So I had this plan. I wanted to open a wellness center—but not the usual kind. Yeah, yoga, meditation, breathwork, workshops, all of that. But I wanted it to be mostly pro-bono, or at least have two sides to the business—profit and non-profit, so one side could support the other. I was working with a consultant to find a way to break even, pull state funding, so I could actually treat people who needed it. Unhoused people. People without insurance who couldn’t afford a regular doctor. I’d prescribe herbs, diet plans—help balance nutrition, boost immunity. Treat minor conditions for people who just couldn’t get that kind of care otherwise. I even partnered with a shelter nearby, and some farms upstate—we’d work with CSAs to get food into people’s hands. You can give someone all the information in the world, but if they can’t afford groceries, it’s useless.”
She goes quiet, but as she tells this story, something about it feels achingly familiar.
“So what happened?” I ask. My throat suddenly feels dry. I shift my grip on the wheel and check the clock. Three hours out. The wind has settled some, but we’re driving back into the thick of the rain now, and it hammers the windshield in sheets.
“Then… I don’t know. I poured every penny I had into it. Dad always made sure Mom had money set aside. When she died, it came to me, and I used all of it. Plus whatever he’d given me over the years—graduation money, that kind of thing. A few thousand here and there.”
“You don’t have a trust?” I ask in shock. I know Pearl does.
“Mom wouldn’t let him give me one. I get where she was coming from… money changes people—she wanted me to earn what I had. It never really bothered me before.” She pauses. “When everything was falling apart, I went to my dad for a loan. He said no. Which, fine. Except he’d just lent Pearl something like half a million for her business, and shedoeshave a trust. He’s rich, but he’s not—” she glances at me, “you know,yourich.”
My chest is tightening. This past summer, Pearl had laughed about Rose over drinks—how she couldn’t hold a job, then how angry she was at her sister for borrowing money from their dad, then torched all of it along with her savings on some get-rich-quick scheme.
All of it was a blatant fucking lie.
“So, anyway, I went to these investors. It wasn’t a profitable concept, so it took a lot of convincing, but I sold them on the optics. I’d make them first in line for repayment from the revenue side of the business. I’d already secured grants and state funding for the pro-bono work. I even had nurse practitioners lined up for rotating volunteer hours, so we could order blood work, have more on-site health care, that kind of thing.” She turns to look out the window, pensive.
