Chapter 10 - The Sovereign Autumn
Ten months later, the October sun was setting over the San Gabriel Mountains behind Pasadena with that glorious, liquid amber light that makes the dry arroyo look like a valley of beaten gold.
The gardens of fourteen-twenty-eight Hillcrest Avenue were completely silent except for the low, rhythmic splashing of the stone fountain in the center of the courtyard and the dry rustle of the sycamore leaves falling across the brick terrace.
I sat in my wicker armchair beneath the shade of the wisteria arbor, wearing an old cashmere sweater that had belonged to my husband, a pair of gray corduroy trousers, and my garden gloves resting in my lap.
Across my knees lay the first bound, advance copy of the Whitmore House spring catalog—two hundred and forty pages of poetry, investigative journalism, regional natural history, and debut fiction from sixteen young writers whose names had never appeared in a society column.
The cover bore our traditional, ninety-year-old imprint: an open book resting upon a block of California redwood, flanked by the motto: The truth does not require an apology.
A shadow crossed the brick terrace.
Daniel Reeves walked out from the library, carrying a silver tray with a fresh pot of Earl Grey tea, two porcelain cups, and an envelope bearing the blue-and-white crest of the Los Angeles County Department of Probation.
"The quarterly monitoring report from Van Nuys, Margaret," Daniel said, setting the tray on the low wicker table between our chairs.
I took off my reading glasses and laid them on the catalog cover.
My cheek was completely clear.
The dark hematoma had long since faded; the bone had knit itself back to its original line; the small scar near my temple was nothing more than a faint, silver thread that caught the light only when I turned my head toward the setting sun.
"What does the officer report, Daniel?" I asked, pouring the dark amber tea into the porcelain.
"She has completed two hundred and forty hours of her community restitution at the East Los Angeles branch library," Daniel read from the single typed sheet. "The branch manager notes that she arrived on time for every shift, that she reorganized the entire young-adult fiction section using the Dewey Decimal system without assistance, and that she has enrolled in an evening certificate program in archival preservation at Glendale Community College."
He paused, glancing at me over the rim of his cup.
"Her retail employment at the bookstore on Van Nuys Boulevard has been extended to thirty-five hours a week. Her manager reports that she sold forty-two copies of our California natural history guide last month by hand-selling them to high school science teachers from the valley."
"Did she take the bus?"
"She takes the two-thirty-three line every morning at six-fifteen," Daniel said softly. "She hasn't missed a day since May."
I looked out across the lawn toward the rose garden, where the hybrid teas were putting out their final, deep-red autumn blooms before the winter dormancy began.
The canes were thick, tough, and scarred where the pruning shears had cut them back to the hardwood in January. But the flowers were larger than they had been in five years—heavy, dark, and smelling of damask and rich earth.
"And Ethan?" I asked.
"Ethan is in Phoenix," Daniel replied, folding the probation report and slipping it into his briefcase. "His father’s bankruptcy was finalized by the court in Wilmington three weeks ago. The liquidation trustee recovered twelve cents on the dollar for the creditors. Ethan is working as an assistant estimator for a commercial roofing contractor on the south side of town, living in a shared two-bedroom apartment near the airport. His real estate license was formally revoked by the state commission on Friday afternoon."
Daniel stood up, walked to the edge of the terrace, and looked out over the roof of the city where the first evening lights of Pasadena were beginning to sparkle through the blue twilight like fallen stars.
"You saved the company, Margaret," he said quietly. "Our institutional credit line was renewed by Wells Fargo this morning at prime minus one. The spring advance orders are sixty percent higher than any quarter in the last decade. We belong to the writers again."
"We always belonged to the writers, Daniel," I told him, rising from my chair with the slow, deliberate strength of a woman whose foundations had been tested by fire and found true. "We just had to remind the accountants that a book is not an invoice."
I walked down the three brick steps into the center of the courtyard, my slippers making a soft, scraping sound on the fallen leaves.
I stopped beside the stone fountain.
I looked up at the mountains, where the snow was already beginning to cap the highest peaks of Mount San Antonio, cold, white, and permanent against the purple evening sky.
I was seventy-one years old.
I had buried my husband.
I had buried my only daughter.
I had watched the child I had nurtured turn her hand against my face in front of twenty-three people who had eaten my bread and measured my worth by the thickness of my checkbook.
And yet, standing in the center of the garden I had planted forty years ago, I felt no sorrow.
I felt no rage.
I felt only the vast, clean, magnificent stillness of an old tree that had shed its dead branches in the winter storm, standing upright in the deep earth, unburdened, un-owned, and completely sovereign beneath the open sky.
The telephone inside the library rang once—a single, clear, musical chime through the open French doors.
May you like
I did not turn to answer it.
I took a deep breath of the mountain air, smelled the jasmine and the cold stone, and watched the night come down over the valley like a long, well-deserved sleep.
