I’d gotten back into the habit of singing zarzuelas aloud, and my new assistant, Mayra, had also acquired La Cordobesa’s old (bad) habit of sticking cotton balls in her ears. I didn’t care because at least Alberto’s two-year-old son, Armandito, seemed to enjoy my singing and often followed me around the kitchen, learning the lyrics of my songs, or asking me over and over again all the ingredients in my truffles, which he loved more than life itself.

“Chocolate, butter, leche,” he recited in baby-talk.

How I loved those round, rosy cheeks of his—I could watch him all day long. Although Mayra had initially been guarded with me because her cousin Elisa had ended up in prison, she eventually understood that it had been Elisa’s own doing, not anything I’d done.

It also helped that I encouraged Alberto, slightly, to marry her. I must admit it wasn’t easy. It took a while for him to make the decision to marry Mayra—after all, he’d been preparing to be a priest for years—but he finally came to terms with his feelings for Mayra and decided to give Armandito a family.

After the cacao industry collapsed in the region, most of the French landowners returned to Europe, including Laurent and Angélica. The four of us sold our land and hacienda to Don Fernando del Río, who decided to start a new cultivation from scratch. He tore down the old, infested trees, and replanted new ones. It was a project that might take years to succeed, but that was no longer our concern.

With the money from the sale, Angélica bought tickets to Europe and planned to spend the next few months traveling all over the Old Continent. She seemed more than a little excited to embark on this new adventure and even smiled at me the last time I’d seen her.

Begrudgingly, the two of us had realized we had more in common than we ever thought: our sense of adventure, our impatience for the town’s tattletales, even a dislike for beets. It was bittersweet that once I started to know her and make amends, she had to leave.

I ended up buying the coffee shop I had once visited with Martin. It took a small investment, but with my experience and the excitement of being the first chocolatier in the region, the business was paying off. In the few months since I’d opened the shop, I’d acquired a small, but regular clientele. People came all the way from Guayaquil to try my chocolate. As it turned out, I had access to very exclusive and fine cacao beans, which arrived from a new and promising plantation in Colombia, owned by none other than Martin Sabater.