Diego and Bea Reunite and Decide to Build a Treehouse Hotel Together

Diego and Bea reunite and decide to build a treehouse hotel together at a moment when grief, family, and work converge. Diego arrives as Bea’s family is mourning Ángela, then offers Bea an architectural commission that joins a concrete business venture to a tentative renewal of their relationship. The decision also carries a personal milestone: Diana, who had been silent after her mother’s death, is now speaking and asks for the treehouse Bea began for her.

Mourning and an Unexpected Arrival

Ángela had left instructions for where she wanted her ashes scattered: the cliff Irene had chosen for the relocated Romanesque chapel, one of Ángela’s favorite places. She had joked that the chapel had turned the site into a place of pilgrimage and that her choir friends, the priest, and her patients might take the scattering as evidence that she had finally joined the religious fold. The family went there two days later. Although they had hoped to keep the occasion private, many people came; they did not turn anyone away, knowing Ángela would have welcomed their company and that the family needed its warmth.

The October sky was clear and the sea calm. Bea had imagined the north wind blowing Ángela’s ashes back over the family, but they fell into the water and disappeared among the waves. The later sight of an empty urn brought a small, uncertain question about what people usually do with it. Diego answered from behind them with a story about leaving an urn in the attic until his daughter used it as a bathtub for her dolls. The mundane anecdote cut through the solemnity without diminishing it, and announced his presence before Bea had turned around.

Diego Returns

Diego had come to attend to some business and decided to stop by. In a fitted black suit and dark shirt, without a tie, he removed his sunglasses and greeted the family with a shy smile. Bea began to tremble. She wanted him to embrace her, or to throw herself into his arms, but restrained herself. Her response held the measure of their separation: for four months she had tried to deny him, reject the life they had shared, and teach herself not to remember him; his arrival made the force of that effort plain.

Bea’s father suggested that Diego take her for a walk, recognizing that she needed a little distance from the family gathering. She protested, though she also understood that the suggestion was right. The walk gave the reunion room to become more than a greeting. Before Bea got out of the car, Diego spoke about his own experience of losing Diana. He did not present himself as someone who had mastered absence: after more than two years, he said, he had been coping badly and making mistakes. What he had learned, at last, was that he could offer Bea help if she wanted it. His words moved her, and she realized that she did want that help—that accepting it might be what enabled her to continue.

A Shared Project in the Chestnut Grove

Diego brought Bea to a clearing and explained that the parcel belonged to him and León, with whom he was going to start a business. Bea did not yet know what sort of venture he meant; she wondered whether it would be another sawmill or biomass plant. Diego acknowledged the trust involved in León’s participation, especially after the way he had treated Irene. The partnership was therefore not simply an idea on paper: it depended on a family member’s willingness to trust him again.

The project was a hotel among the trees, planned for the chestnut grove. Diego described fifteen small houses, with space for roughly thirty-eight to forty guests, and hoped it would be the first treehouse hotel in Cantabria. The required arrangements were already in order; what they lacked, he said, was the best architect. He asked Bea to take that role. The offer gave her a professional place in the project, but its personal significance was also clear in the way she read Diego’s actions: he had left his former home with his in-laws, moved with Diana to Santander, and was making room for Bea in the work he hoped to build.

Diana’s Request and Bea’s Answer

Diego attached a condition to the hotel commission. Bea first had to finish the treehouse she had started for Diana at her grandparents’ house, so that Diana would have a special place to visit them. Diego told her he had managed to save the estate and its house, though he and Diana no longer lived there and had moved to Santander. Bea had not known about the move. His account connected the immediate proposal to changes he had made in his life, expressed not through a declaration but through practical decisions and an invitation to work together.

Bea then asked how Diana could have made the request. Diego explained that she could now speak, and played a voice recording on his phone. In it, Diana asks for her treehouse. Tears appeared in Diego’s eyes; he wiped them away with the back of his hand and apologized for still being overwhelmed by it. The recording makes the child’s request more than a condition of the commission: it reveals a change in Diana’s life and gives Bea a direct reason to return to the unfinished house.

Bea accepted. She agreed to build Diana’s treehouse quickly, then take on what she called the still more extraordinary project of constructing a hotel in the trees with a red-haired man. Diego came up behind her and embraced her from behind; he said the work would be fun, and Bea agreed. The ending binds the professional and personal decisions without making them identical: first comes a promise to Diana, then a substantial shared undertaking with Diego. The hotel plan becomes a way for the pair to imagine what comes next while honoring the family bonds and unfinished work that brought them together.