“Sit down,” I said.
We sat on the low stone wall near the gate, where we could see the vineyard spread below us in the morning light. It was not the first difficult conversation we had sat through in this view. It was perhaps the most important.
“He said a lot of things,” I told her. “Over several weeks. You heard them.”
She looked at her hands.
“I know.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
A long quiet. The kind that is doing work.
“I didn’t know how,” she said. “He’s very certain about things. It’s hard to push back when someone is very certain.”
“I know something about that,” I said. “Your father was certain about things. The difference is that his certainty was generous. He was certain the land could produce something worth drinking. He was certain you were capable of more than people expected. He was certain I could run this operation alone after he was gone, which I was not certain about myself.” I paused. “Certainty about what other people are worth is different from certainty about what you can do.”
