They rejected the pregnant widow, but the grandmother who took her in had a secret.

Chapter 10

Life continued.

It had to. There was land to work, a child to raise, a business to run.

Without Nana Concha, the house felt emptier. But her presence remained in every corner — in the herbs drying on the porch, in the remedies we still made from her recipes, in the Zapotec words little Ernesto still used.

He missed her terribly. For months after she died, he would go to her room and just sit there, as if waiting for her to come back.

I let him grieve in his own way.

Rosa became more than an employee. She became a friend, a confidante, a surrogate grandmother for Ernesto. She didn’t try to replace Nana Concha — no one could — but she filled some of the empty space with her own warmth.

The years passed.

Little Ernesto grew into a boy who knew the mountain like the back of his hand. He could identify plants by sight, track animals by their prints, predict weather by reading the sky.

He was his father’s son, and his great-grandmother’s student.

He started school in town when he turned six. He was bright, curious, good at numbers and reading. But his real education happened at home, on the land, learning the things that can’t be taught from books.

By the time he was ten, he could manage the garden himself, care for the animals, help with the herb preparations.

He was also starting to ask questions about his father.

I told him everything. About how Ernesto had died. About the land he’d bought in secret. About the Montiels and why we didn’t see them.

I didn’t hide anything. I wanted him to know the truth, to understand the sacrifice that had built the life we had.

He took it all in with the seriousness of someone older than his years.

“Papa loved us,” he said after I’d finished telling him everything.

“Yes,” I said. “Very much.”

“And the Montiels didn’t want us.”

“They didn’t know how to,” I replied carefully. “They didn’t understand what mattered.”

He thought about that for a while.

“Do you think they’re sorry?” he asked.

“Some of them might be,” I said honestly. “But sorry doesn’t always fix things.”

He nodded, accepting that.

“I don’t need them,” he said finally. “I have you. And I had Nana Concha. And Papa left us everything we need.”

My heart broke and mended at the same time.

“Yes,” I agreed. “He did.”