She stood. She looked at me with the expression she had worn as a child after difficult conversations, wrung out and slightly relieved, the way you look when something you have been carrying has been set down even if it has not been resolved.
She hugged me.
I held her for a moment, my daughter, thirty-one years old and standing at the entrance of something, and I hoped with everything I had that she would choose well.
Greg called three days later.
Not his attorney. Greg himself, which Patricia said was either a good sign or a tactical shift and we should listen carefully either way.
He asked if he could come to the vineyard.
He came on a Thursday, alone, driving a car that was too clean for the gravel road and parking it carefully at the edge of the turning circle. He was thirty-four and good-looking in the way of men who have always been told so, with the posture of someone accustomed to rooms adjusting to his arrival. He stood by his car for a moment and looked at the property with an expression I hadn’t seen on him before.
