Chapter 10 - The Architecture of Light
Spring came early to Richmond that year.
By the first week of April, the azaleas along Monument Avenue were exploding in clouds of crimson, violet, and white. The old dogwood tree in the corner of my back garden—the one Reid had wanted to cut down to make room for a three-car garage—was heavy with four-petaled green-white blossoms that drifted across the new brick patio like warm snow.
I had resigned from my field position with Arctic Industrial Logistics in January.
I didn't need the pipeline contracts anymore. I had opened Fenwick Thermal Engineering LLC on the third floor of the Monument Avenue house, taking on three select commercial clients who paid me five hundred dollars an hour to review cascade cooling designs from my own library, using my own fiber-optic line, looking out over my own garden.
At eleven o'clock on a Tuesday morning, the back French doors were wide open, letting in the smell of damp earth, sweetbox, and freshly mowed grass.
In the center of the patio sat my mother.
She was wearing a light linen shirt, canvas gardening gloves, and a straw hat with a blue ribbon tied under her chin. Her knee had healed beautifully after an arthroscopic reconstruction in February; she no longer used the bamboo cane, though she kept an orthopedic stool nearby for when she was potting geraniums.
Beside her, holding a flat of purple salvia, was Martha Gable.
"More peat moss in that corner, Helen," Martha was saying, pointing with a trowel. "The soil is too clay-heavy near the brick wall."
"I know what I’m doing, Martha," Helen laughed, wiping a smudge of rich black loam from her nose with the back of her gloved hand. "I was planting salvia in Church Hill before you were out of nursing school."
The kitchen behind them was alive with light.
The old walnut dining table was gone. I had sold it to an antique dealer on Broad Street for eighteen hundred dollars and donated the entire sum to the Richmond Senior Resource Center.
In its place was a long, simple table made of Virginia white oak, built by a female woodworker in Charlottesville. It was light, pale, finished with pure tung oil that smelled of nuts and clean timber.
On the sideboard sat a platter of lemon bars Helen had baked that morning, a pot of Earl Grey tea, and a bowl of fresh strawberries from the market on Cary Street.
My phone on the kitchen counter buzzed once.
It was an email from Evelyn Vance.
> *Audrey:*
> *Final status update on Calloway v. Fenwick restitution compliance.*
>
> *Reid’s equity liquidation from the Hanover escrow has cleared the court registry. A certified check for $146,800 has been deposited into your corporate trust account this morning. His architectural license has been suspended for eighteen months by the Virginia APELSCIDLA Board for fraudulent certification of Tyler’s framing invoices.*
>
> *Tyler has entered a formal diversion program in Powhatan County. Brooke’s civil conversion suit settled out of court yesterday; she has returned twelve thousand dollars' worth of jewelry and clothing to my office, which we will auction for the restitution fund.*
>
> *Pamela has relocated to an assisted living apartment in Roanoke, funded entirely by Douglas’s military pension. Her bridge club membership was formally terminated last Thursday.*
>
> *You are entirely clear, Audrey. The ledger is balanced.*
>
> *Best,*
> *Evelyn.*
I read the email once, clicked the archive button, and turned off the screen.
I walked through the French doors out onto the warm brick patio. The sun was high, striking the southern exposure of the old brick house, warming the slate roof until the air above it shimmered with gentle, thermal waves.
"Audrey!" Helen called out, holding up a small terra-cotta pot with a bright red geranium nestled in the moss. "Look at this one. The nursery boy on Grove said it wouldn't take the afternoon shade, but I told him if we keep the roots cool with a good layer of pine bark, it’ll bloom all the way through August."
I sat down on the low brick retaining wall beside her, took off my sunglasses, and looked at my mother’s hands.
The bruises were gone. The skin was smooth, tanned by three weeks of spring sun, the nails clean and trimmed.
"It will bloom, Mom," I said, leaning my head against her shoulder. "The roots are cold enough."
Helen smiled, her arm reaching around my neck, pulling me close against the familiar, clean scent of lavender, sun-dried cotton, and earth.
May you like
"It's quiet today, sweetheart," she murmured.
"Yes," I said, closing my eyes and listening to the bees moving through the white dogwood blossoms above us. "The compressor is off, Mom. Everything is finally at the right temperature."
