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vineyards than in Spain.
    The white house was beautiful, special, with its blue gables and dormers and the long row of tall windows on the ground floor that let in all the light and sunshine. The view was lovely even in winter, when the vines curved in spiky leafless rows up the hills and over and down, into infinity it seemed. Then came the spring, and leaves of such a tender green it touched the heart because it meant life was coming back to the Ravel land. Of course with summer the place became alive with itinerant workers, and come the late September–early October harvest, depending on the weather and the exact ripeness of the grapes, white for the grassy-scented Sauvignon Blanc, and Tempranillos and Cabernets, there seemed to be more people at the vineyard than in Las Ramblas.
    The stone-faced bodega would smell of crushed grapes and also of the food set up outside on planked wooden tables, good hearty food for the workers, with wine to drink after a long day’s picking, and maybe a de Ravel sherry or two afterward to wash down the good bread, baked that morning by Lorenza’s own cook who had been with the family longer than Lorenza herself.
    Until Juan Pedro died, Lorenza had never lived at the bodega, only visited. Now it was her home, her domaine, her life. It was also the symbol of her success.
    Lorenza had become a force to be reckoned with and that was why, today, after reading the shocking letter from the American lawyer over and over again, she had called a family meeting. It had finally become necessary to sort out the past and secure the de Ravel future.

 
    Chapter 5
    Lorenza’s housekeeper’s name was Buena. In fact, her real name was Maria Carmen but her response to any question or comment was always buena —“good”—and so she had become known by that. Buena had been sent on to Barcelona a week earlier to open up the house. She’d called in plumbers and electricians to make sure everything worked, and had employed a team of cleaners and window-washers and repairmen, because after all, nothing had been touched in ten years. The “wake” Lorenza had held after her husband’s funeral, for family and the closest friends, had left her big salón in an after-the-party mess, which Buena had cleaned up then, but now she saw to it that everything was put back clean and tidy. Only the master bedroom and the small library that opened onto the courtyard garden, the room where Juan Pedro died, though they had been cleaned too, were exactly as he had left them. On Lorenza’s orders, nothing had been moved.
    The front door was a single slab of solid chestnut, twelve feet tall, carved from a tree on the Ravel estate, felled in a freak hurricane a century ago. The door knocker was solid brass in the shape of the Hand of Fatima. The fingers were worn smooth with use and had once again been polished to a dull gleam.
    Buena heard the car and ran to open the door, flinging it back so hard the knocker rat-tatted against the groove it had made in the wood. She pushed back the gray hair that somehow always straggled out of its bun, skewering it with a long hairgrip, adjusted the horn-rimmed glasses that always slid down her long nose, straightened the blue cotton housedress, worried that it pulled over her plump hips, and beaming with pleasure called out, “ Bienvenido, Señora. Welcome home.”
    Standing next to the car, Lorenza saw her and laughed. “It wouldn’t be the same without you here, Buena.” She walked across the gravel, careful in her high red heels, took the single wide step in one stride, and flung her arms around her old friend.
    â€œHow many years has it been since we were first here?” she asked into the tangle of hairpins above Buena’s left ear.
    Buena said, “Must I remind you again that I was here first. I arrived the day before you, yourself, came. The bride.”
    Of course Lorenza didn’t need to be