When I was done speaking, he approached the sideboard.

“May I?” he asked, opening the cabinet and grabbing a bottle of aguardiente.

I nodded.

He took out two glasses and filled them. Then, he handed me one. He sat in front of me and gulped his drink at once. I took a cautious sip of mine before speaking.

“I understand you might be . . . frustrated with what’s happened,” I started. “With your father, with the inheritance, well, with everything, but the truth is I need you here, and I want to make you a business proposition.”

“No.”

“I’ll raise your salary.”

He shook his head.

“I had no idea you disliked me this much.”

“It’s not you,” he said, staring at his glass.

Angélica, then. He was this distraught because she’d left.

“Well, I’m sorry if my arrival here has posed an inconvenience for your complicated relationship with Angélica.” I wasn’t proud of the bitterness in my tone.

“It’s over.”

“It can’t be over if you’re this troubled about it.”

“I don’t mean my relationship with her. This is over.”

Did he mean us?

I fingered my string of black pearls, my sole ornament. “I know that.”

He banged the armrest and stood up, dragging the chair’s legs back, making an unbearable screeching sound.

“I mean this plantation! It’s over!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“It’s not about you, woman! The plantation is dead. Yesterday, we got confirmation from a technician from Guayaquil that there are traces of witches’-broom and frosty pod rot in most of the plants!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about diseases that are killing this entire plantation. In fact, all the region is infected!”

“What?” I sprang up. “How come you’re here getting drunk instead of doing something about it?”

“What am I supposed to do? There is no cure for either disease. Everybody knows that once the escoba de bruja and the monilla appear, a plantation is doomed. It’s a good thing your father didn’t live to see this.”

I shook my head, my mouth dry as a bone. “Surely, there’s something we can do about it. Bring another technician. Get help. I’ll go back to Spain, to France, and find someone.”

I was frantic, pacing the room back and forth. Martin blocked my way and squeezed my shoulders with his hands.

“Stop. There is nothing you or anybody else can do. These diseases are well known to wipe out entire regions. Don’t you think that if there was a cure, I would’ve done something about it? I would’ve traveled to every corner of the world to find a solution, but there’s nothing. Every landowner knows this and lives in terror of these diseases. I’m telling you. This is the end of the cacao bonanza for this entire country.”