Not all received what Lucía would have wanted for them, because justice has its limits and its times and its frustrations. But the truth remained documented. The facts remained in the official record and that, although it was not everything, was something. It was more than the buried silence that had been there for decades.
Elena was present the day the vineyard produced its first real harvest. She sat in her usual chair with her coffee and looked at the loaded rows with an expression that Lucía would never forget. “What do you think?” Lucía asked her. Elena looked at her. That your grandfather would be very proud. Lucía could not answer. It was not necessary.
Don Aurelio became something like an informal advisor, although he never called it that. He arrived, looked, gave opinions and left. Sometimes he brought other viticulturists from the region to see what Lucía was doing. Sometimes he arrived alone to sit on his rock and drink coffee in silence. One day, without any preamble, he said to her, “When you said you were going to analyze the soil that first day, it seemed to me you were a city girl who didn’t understand anything.”
Lucía looked at him with a smile. And now the man took a long sip of coffee. Now it seems to me that you understand more than anyone. 5 years after the day Lucía bought that dry vineyard, the land was unrecognizable. The green rows extended from end to end. The mature plants produced grapes that the oenologists Lucía had invited to visit her described with words she kept forever.
Unique terroir, extraordinary mineral complexity, the kind of fruit that only land that has suffered and has survived gives. The Herrera Vineyard began to receive regional, then national recognitions. A specialized publication wrote about Lucía’s story, not only about the wine, but about everything that had happened, the bunker, the contamination, the recovery.
The community that had united around something that everyone could have ignored and that they chose not to ignore. The story resonated beyond what Lucía expected. People wrote to her from places she could not locate on the map, farmers who had inherited problematic lands, people who had wanted to give up and did not know if they had the right to continue, people who had found uncomfortable truths and did not know if it was worth defending them.
She answered all of them, “Not always quickly, because time in the vineyard is scarce and the land does not wait for anyone.” But she answered them, always with the same essential thing. Do not give up, the earth does not lie. What is buried can come to light and when it does everything changes. The day Lucía turned 40, she organized a meal at the vineyard.
Not a big party, just the people who had been there from the beginning. Elena, who arrived with a bottle of the first wine they had produced together. Don Aurelio, who arrived as always, without announcing, with his straw hat and his expression of few gestures but many years. The Castillo brothers, Mrs. Miriam, who prepared lunch and who at dessert toasted with a voice that trembled a little with emotion.
Lucía’s brothers also arrived. That was a surprise. They had called the previous week, uncomfortable, clumsy, not quite knowing how to say what they wanted to say. The eldest spoke for both, he told her that they had seen the news, that they had read the article, that they knew they had made bad decisions and that they had left things unsaid that they should have said.
It was not a perfect apology. It did not have the exact words, but it was real. And it
