Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual violence, and gender discrimination.

Rivera Garza spends the winter holiday season of 2019 in Houston with her parents. She tells them that she is looking into reopening Liliana’s case while walking the Harrisburg Trail near her home one day. They give her their support. For the first time, on New Year’s Eve, they also set Liliana’s photo on the table as they celebrate: “We talked about her in complete sentences for the first time in ages” (115). 

Rivera Garza and her husband go to Liliana’s old apartment, Mimosas 658, in January 2020. She also hires an attorney to manage the search for her sister’s file. She recollects finding the apartment for Liliana; Rivera Garza’s colleague and his family lived above it, so she believed that her sister was safe there. Now, she presses the buzzer and asks if she can enter the building, which belongs to a construction company; the owner eventually returns to let her into the apartment where Liliana hosted her friends from university regularly. Rivera Garza asks the owner if he knows what happened here. He denies it, though his secretary earlier said she knew.