“Thirty-eight.”
Hannah nodded.
“Why?”
Jack smiled.
“Because thirty-six sounds like you calculated it.”
She laughed.
They settled on thirty-eight.
The compromise was mostly for entertainment.
At eighty-one, Jack suffered a minor stroke.
He survived.
Recovered speech fully.
Walking became harder.
Hannah moved meetings into the farmhouse more often.
One rainy morning, he watched the ducks from the porch.
“You remember the first day?”
“Unfortunately.”
“You were furious.”
“You were reckless.”
“I had counts.”
“You were responsibly reckless.”
Hannah smiled.
“That’s almost a compliment.”
“It is.”
He looked toward the vineyard.
“You know what bothered me?”
“The ducks.”
“No.”
She turned.
“What?”
“That you didn’t need me to understand it first.”
Hannah became quiet.
Jack continued.
“You came home from school with ideas I didn’t know.”
He looked embarrassed.
“I thought being your father meant I was supposed to know more.”
Hannah sat beside him.
“You knew more about farming.”
“Some parts.”
“A lot.”
“Not that part.”
“No.”
Jack nodded.
“That took me too long.”
Hannah looked toward the vineyard.
“You opened the gate on day two.”
“I did.”
“That was enough.”
They sat quietly.
Rain moved across the hills.
The same kind of Oregon rain that once made the entire farm feel as if it might dissolve into mud.
Jack died two years later.
Eighty-three.
At home.
Quietly.
Linda and Hannah were with him.
The funeral drew growers from across the valley.
Calvin Moss came.
So did Brian Keller.
Dr. Megan Lee.
Workers.
Winemakers.
Neighbors.
Students Hannah had taught.
Someone suggested releasing ducks during the memorial.
Hannah said absolutely not.
Jack would have hated spectacle.
Instead, she placed one white feed bucket near the barn entrance.
Inside it were notes from people.
Stories.
Advice Jack had given.
Arguments.
Jokes.
One card came from Calvin.
He taught me to admit when the girl with ducks is right. Eventually.
Hannah cried and laughed at the same time.
After the funeral, she walked alone into the lower Pinot block.
The vines were older now.
Several had been replaced.
Drainage improved.
The weather station was newer.
The landscape looked familiar and completely different.
Hannah crouched beside a vine.
A snail moved across wet bark.
She stared at it.
Then laughed.
“Bold.”
A duck found it ten minutes later.
Life continued.
At fifty-two, Hannah stepped back from daily vineyard operations.
Her niece Emily Miller, Tom’s daughter, had studied plant pathology and wanted to return.
Hannah did not hand over control easily.
That amused everyone.
“You’re becoming Jack,” Linda told her.
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
Emily proposed using autonomous monitoring cameras to identify pest hot spots and direct targeted duck rotations.
Hannah hated it.
Not the ducks.
The cameras.
“We don’t need machines telling us where ducks go.”
Emily stared.
“Did Grandpa Jack say exactly that about your idea?”
Hannah stopped.
Linda laughed from across the room.
Hannah pointed at Emily.
“That was unfair.”
“But correct.”
“Unfortunately.”
They tested the system.
It worked.
Not perfectly.
Enough.
Hannah learned something her father had learned before her.
It was easier to celebrate change when you were the person introducing it.
Harder when change arrived through someone younger who had already imagined a farm after your own habits ended.
She tried to become better at that.