Nacre's Promise

Chapter XXXVIII : Frustration

Cuevas-Blancas, 1914.

Coming back from the stables, Don Rodrigo painfully climbed the steps of the hacienda, entered the living room and sank heavily into an armchair. He was physically tired and his morale was not up to par either.

He had gone to the chestnut fields and Diego's absence had been very difficult for him to accept.

It was a visit they always made together, since Diego was a child and missed his presence. Salvador, by his side, worked tirelessly, yet the relationship he had with Diego was not comparable. He publicly denied that he had a preference for one or the other of his children, but in fact, that was not the case.

It had been almost a year since Diego had disappeared and several months with his wife, they had tried to separate his grandchildren from their mother. Not a day went by without deploring his weakness and bitterly regretting this reckless act.

Everything seemed to be back to normal, but the connivance he had known with Isabel had completely disappeared. He didn't blame her. He had been cowardly enough to allow himself to be manipulated by his wife and he recognized that instead of his daughter-in-law, he would not have acted otherwise. Still, he hoped that Isabel would eventually forgive him.

Following these incidents, he was able to put an end to Elvira's actions by threatening to repudiate her definitively, without any income. Unfortunately, this threat would not scare him for long enough. What would he do next? A recent interview with their family doctor confirmed that his mental state was irreversible. She was angry with the whole world and she had focused her resentment on Isabel, so much so that she could have killed her with his own hands, if the opportunity had presented itself. How could she have fallen into dementia like this?

He didn't feel guilty because he always felt like he had already done everything to make her happy and minimize problems. The servants were also afraid of the uncontrollable reactions of their mistress and the service was affected. Elvira's rage grew tenfold by the day. It would soon be necessary to make arrangements to get her away before she physically attacked someone.

That day, Rodrigo had passed Isabel as she was getting ready to go on horseback. She had never stopped the research and led the work in the field and the various actions to try to find Diego.

Their exchange was limited to a quick and polite hello without any emotion or interest. Rodrigo couldn't take it anymore. Isabel avoided confrontation, only addressed him when it was necessary and again with counted words. This situation was becoming unbearable.

With the help of Matéo, Isabel completely managed the maintenance of the vineyard and the production of the new cru that Diego had created. For the sale in the restaurants of Barcelona, ​​she relied on Salvador who already took care of the commercial aspects of the whole estate.

The first production of the estate of Cuevas-Blancas, which was finally called Cava de Cuevas-Blancas, had received a very good reception as an ersatz champagne. A large number of bottles were soon sold as new wine.

The aging cellars were finished. Refining barrels had been brought there. They now contained the second harvest which, with aging, would be closer to a champagne than a table wine.

Rodrigo, although he would never admit it, was jealous that Isabel had been able to offer his production by relying on the relations of the agricultural cooperative of Manuela Cortez.

This had allowed him to consider that the sale of the next harvest, be done without much effort. Indeed, Manuela now directly supplied many restaurants. His daughter-in-law's contacts and commercial contacts would not have been provided to him if he had been the sole manager and that made him jealous.

The future of this new cellar was therefore encouraging. Isabel had achieved great feats to meet deadlines, launch the activity and sell the production and this had visibly marked her physically.

Despite the exhaustion, she loved this job. First because the activity and the fatigue it caused allowed him to clear his head and fall asleep endlessly in his bed, second because it provided him and his family with personal income. .

The transmission, made to Diego, of the house and the land as a wedding gift, enabled Isabel to operate them independently. As long as her husband was not found or officially declared dead, which could take years, she would have the capacity to run the operation completely independently and the income that she would derive from it would come back to him in full.

This income would also allow him to pay the workers who helped him in this task as well as his household staff.

She had briefly considered keeping only Inès to take care of the children but quickly gave up. They were all essential to enable him to manage his operation. They relieved her of all the chores she could not take care of: the gardener provided food from the vegetable patch, the cook prepared delicious meals suitable for children, the maid also acted as babysitter, and the steward managed the house and the farm in his absence. Better to keep his faithful assistants so as not to find himself alone with his despair and his dark thoughts. Besides, since she liked them all, she would have found it very difficult to send them away.

Rodrigo saw Isabel's distress, but he could never find the courage to provoke a discussion in an attempt to rekindle the dialogue and find the relationship they had before. He was aware that his abandonment of the research too soon, out of fatigue, desperation and perhaps also, he sometimes wondered, out of cowardice, had a lot to do with this.

Elvira kept telling him that Diego was dead and that it was all Isabel's fault. He had come to accept that his son would certainly never come back, yet failed to understand that the rest of the message about Isabel's guilt had unwittingly crept into his mind.

Rodrigo saw his stepdaughter physically dry up. In the narrow view of her patriarchal upbringing, a woman's place in her world was at home, not in the vineyards.

This role reversal did not suit him and not taking care of the wine adventure himself made his jealousy persistent. He would have liked so much to participate in this development, to make his contribution to this new building, he who had planned everything to make it possible. This kind of bitterness, which he could not ignore, prevented him from renewing the relationship he had once had with his daughter-in-law.

He still tried to fight his frustration at being dismissed and never brought up the subject.

Isabel, on the contrary, accommodated it perfectly. She preferred to stay completely away from her in-laws and felt no need to warm up the relationship. Her children were still young.

Deepdown she thought it was better for them to be deprived of grandparents, ratherthan hanging out with a family she considered bad. The absence of a father wasalready very heavy to bear, no one should try to implant in their minds thedoubt about the solidity and the love of their mother