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

Chapter 3

I learned to read the weather by watching the mountain — how the clouds gathered before rain, what scent the north wind carried. I learned to prepare nixtamal in the early morning so the tortillas would turn out right. I learned to treat Lucero’s sore front leg with a poultice Nana Concha made from clay and aloe vera leaf.

In the afternoons, I helped in the garden. I crouched with difficulty — my enormous belly and swollen feet making it hard — and weeded slowly, with the stubbornness of someone who needs to feel they can still do something useful.

Nana Concha watched without comment, but every so often she’d bring over a flat stone for me to sit on and rest.

In the evenings, we sat on the porch. Nana Concha wove. I mended clothes or simply rested my hands on my belly and stared at the sky, which on the mountain seemed bigger and fuller of stars than anywhere I’d ever known.

We talked about Ernesto.

Nana Concha remembered him as a boy, before Don Rosendo had erased her from his life. She remembered how he used to run up the mountain looking for lizards, how he loved tejocote with chili powder, how he’d ask why the stars didn’t fall from the sky.

She told these stories in a soft voice with a smile that changed her face, and I listened and cried silently, because it was the only way I had left to keep knowing him now that he was gone.

It was on one of those evenings that Nana Concha set down her weaving and stared out at the darkening field for a long time without speaking.

I looked at her. “Are you all right, Nana?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She seemed to be making a decision she’d been putting off for a long time.

“Ernesto came to see me,” she finally said. “Three weeks before he died.”

I went still.

“He came alone, in secret like always. But that time he was different. Quieter. He told me he had a feeling. That he sensed something was going to happen, and he wanted to make sure you’d be protected if he wasn’t there anymore.”

My heart began beating differently.

“He left me something,” Nana Concha continued. “He said that if he died before the baby was born, I was supposed to give it to you. Only you. No one else.”

She stood slowly and went inside. I heard her footsteps in the back room, the sound of something being moved, wood scraping against wood.

When Nana Concha returned, she was holding a metal box in her hands. Not large — about the size of a shoebox — painted black and closed with a small padlock.

She set it on the table between us.

“The key,” Nana Concha said. “He left me that too.”

She pulled from her apron pocket a small iron key tied with red wool thread.

I looked at the box. Looked at the key. My hands were shaking when I took it.

“Do you know what’s inside?” I asked.

“No,” Nana Concha replied. “Ernesto said it was between him and you.”

I inserted the key into the lock. It opened with a soft click.

I lifted the lid.

Inside were papers folded carefully, a sealed envelope with my name written in Ernesto’s handwriting, and beneath everything, a small notebook with a green cover.

I took the envelope first and opened it slowly.

It was a letter — three pages filled with his tight, straight handwriting that I knew by heart.

I read it in silence. Nana Concha didn’t ask anything. She just waited, hands folded in her lap.

When I finished reading, my cheeks were wet and my lips pressed tight together. I folded the pages carefully, put them back in the envelope, and pressed it against my chest for a moment.

“What does it say?” Nana Concha asked very softly.

I took a deep breath.

“It says he loved me,” I answered. “And it says he left me the land.”

Nana Concha frowned. “What land?”

I took the papers that had been beneath the envelope and spread them on the table. They were documents — deeds, official pages with stamps and signatures.

I read through them slowly, my hand trembling.

Ernesto had bought land. Not much, but land of his own, registered in his name, paid for silently over three years with money he’d saved from his work, without telling his family anything.

Forty-two hectares on the northern slope, bordering Nana Concha’s property. Good land, with stream water and usable forest.

And it was registered in my name.

He’d done it that way from the beginning, working with a notary in the city, far from Don Rosendo’s eyes.

In the green notebook were all the contacts — the notary’s name, the deed number, the name of the bank where there was an account with enough money to start building.

I closed the notebook and looked at Nana Concha.

“He knew,” I said, my voice breaking. “He knew something might happen to him, and he prepared everything so I wouldn’t be left with nothing.”

Nana Concha nodded slowly. In her dark eyes was something that was both pride and pain.

“My grandson was a good man,” she said quietly. “The Montiels never deserved him.”