I told them everything. Months earlier, I had learned that Daria wasn’t resting from stress at all. She had quietly run up debts on my parents’ credit card, and they had hidden it from me, ashamed. I planned the trip partly to spend a week asking them gently about it, away from Daria’s pressure. When they swapped me for her, I understood they were still protecting the problem instead of facing it.

Every booking was in my name, so I cancelled the hotel, the museum passes, the countryside tour and the transfers the moment their car left my sight, and the refunds returned to my own account. But I am not cruel. I had also booked one clean, modest room for two nights through Mr. Weber, an old friend who runs a travel office there, and the key was waiting at his desk. My father went quiet, because he finally understood that I was angry but never cruel.

Then I spoke to Daria, who had grabbed the phone. She admitted she had told our parents I would not mind, because I always paid and never complained. She had spent nearly all of their savings on online shopping and a failed clothing business, and she feared that, with me beside them, someone would finally ask questions. I told her the debts were hers to carry, and our mother’s card would no longer cover them.

On the third morning I flew out, met them at the little cafe by the river, and we spoke honestly for hours. My parents apologized, my mother tearfully and my father with trembling hands. We agreed that Daria would find a job and repay what she had taken, and that our parents would stop hiding things from me. The three of us spent the remaining four days together, exactly as I had first planned, at a smaller hotel I chose myself. Daria returned home alone and began work at a bakery the following month.