Page 189 - SpontaneousSuccessMatos

who’d been working as a set designer at the campus
theater. He persuaded her to become the chief colorist in
charge of the hand painters at the gallery.
It took a while for the congratulations and cheers to
settle down, then Casilda continued.
"I was surprised by the turn of events, so I dug
deeper. It started at the Hole in the Wall, where Nicko
taught me English. That's where my new life began. I
loved learning and teaching together.
"Then, a German woman tried to buy the barber
shop up the street to open a real-estate office and I felt
angry. I realized the locals would be forced out because
they couldn’t afford to live here anymore. So I got my real
estate license and was successful from the start. What I
knew, and what the foreign realtors didn’t know, was
that many of the properties and houses around Lavanda
weren’t owned by just one person. A son might own the
rights to a bedroom, the mother to the kitchen and the
grandfather to the garden. They’d been bequeathed for
generations, so an outside developer would never get
them all to agree to sell. But I could. I was trusted. I did
the best for them.
"As our village prospered, I watched friends and
neighbors sell their homes, only to be priced out of the
market. They struggled to find new roots, while I
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