considerable preparation in an event this size, and I apologized to her specifically and genuinely because she had done nothing wrong and was absorbing a consequence she had not created.
With each call I said the same thing: the event was canceled, I was aware of the contract terms, I was prepared to discuss compensation for work already completed, and I was not in a position to provide additional explanation at this time.
By eleven o’clock it was done.
I put the phone on the kitchen counter and went outside to trim the roses.
There are things you can only understand about a place by working it with your hands. Richard knew this before I did. He had grown up on a farm in the central valley and he had the particular physical fluency of someone who learned early that land communicates through work, that what a vine needs
