All Chapters of Second Bloom: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Barcelona at Christmas is a city that commits to the season without losing itself in it. The Fira de Santa Llúcia (the traditional Christmas market held in front of the Barcelona Cathedral since 1786 — one of the oldest Christmas markets in Catalonia, famous for its nativity scene figures, decorated trees, and the caganers — small ceramic figurines depicting a squatting person in the act of defecation, a uniquely Catalan Christmas tradition believed to bring good luck and fertility to the coming year) fills the cathedral square with the smell of pine and roasted chestnuts (castanyes — a quintessential Barcelona winter street food, sold from small metal drums by vendors who have worked the same corners for decades). The Passeig de Gràcia lights up with the restrained elegance of a city that knows it doesn't need to try too hard. The neighborhoods carry on with their ordinary business while the decorations go up around them, as if t

Isabel insists on a Christmas gathering. This is not unusual — Isabel has organized a Christmas gathering every year since their second year of university, and the gatherings are always well-considered and warmly delivered and serve multiple functions simultaneously, which is the Isabel way. This year, she insists with slightly more energy than usual, which Valentina notes. The apartment is Isabel's parents' place in Eixample — the same one from the end-of-first-year dinner, with the warm lighting and the good wine and the smell of something slow-cooked. The group is larger this year: twelve people, a mix of university friends and Isabel's newer connections from her communications job, arranged in the specific social geometry of a host who knows exactly where everyone should stand in relation to everyone else. Valentina arrives with Ethan. She has prepared him in the car on the way over &

Barcelona sees in the New Year with grapes. This is the tradition across Spain: twelve grapes eaten in the twelve seconds before midnight, one for each chime of the clock, each grape representing a month of the coming year — las doce uvas de la suerte (the twelve lucky grapes — a tradition that began in 1909 when grape growers in Alicante, facing a surplus harvest, promoted the custom as a way to sell more grapes, and which has since become one of Spain's most beloved New Year's rituals). The television broadcasts the bells from the Puerta del Sol (the central square in Madrid, where Spain's national clock marks the New Year — the tradition is watched simultaneously across the country) and the whole country attempts to eat twelve grapes in twelve seconds, which sounds easier than it is and produces, in most households, a great deal of choking and laughter in approximately equal measure. Ethan has been briefed on the grapes.

She takes a Saturday in May to do nothing but think. This is harder than it sounds. She has spent four years in the second life in deliberate forward motion — the degree, the ROTC, New York, the commission, the coordinator role — and the habit of motion has become its own kind of momentum. She has to consciously choose the stillness. She makes coffee and sits at the desk by the window — the one where the morning light comes in at the angle that suggests it was placed there on purpose — and opens the file and reads it from the beginning. All forty-eight entries. Every cross-reference. Every date. It takes two hours. When she finishes, she closes the laptop and looks at the Madrid courtyard — the tomatoes, the building wall, the slice of sky above — and lets the full shape of it settle. Here is what the file tells her: David Pons has been managin

Clàudia texts on a Tuesday in May: Can you call me tonight? Not urgent but important. Valentina calls at nine. Clàudia answers on the first ring, which she never does — she is the kind of person who lets it ring twice on principle, something about not seeming available — and the fact of the first ring tells Valentina everything about the quality of what she has to say. "I was at a launch event last Thursday," Clàudia says. "Communications industry thing, the kind David goes to. He was there." "Okay." "I ended up next to a woman I know from a PR firm — Marta, we did a project together two years ago. We were talking about career stuff, the market, whatever. And she mentioned, very casually, that she'd been asked to do some consultancy work on a candidate profile." Valentina is still. "What kind of candidate profile?" "Prof