Golden Yarrow didn’t usually make it much past the Fourth of July.
Her neighbor on Kanan Dume Road explained its first spurt of growth. The plant would sprout delicate white threads which cloaked all the little leaves. Then, after the June Gloom, the flowers would crisp up and the hillsides would lose their spackled gold.
When Caroline asked him to tell his stories of years ago, he was invariably delighted. The way one recollection loped into another let him stop and start time with the precision of a maestro.
The night of his birthday party, he set his memories aside.
He found himself surprised by how easily the conversations flowed with Cecile and Sarah, Dorothy and Nick. Not often did he meet new people in a social situation. On occasion, as the pleasant evening progressed, he thought about how good it was to get to know these people.
He found them each interesting, conversant and modest.
He liked that, their modesty. He also took measure of their polite depths of mystery and realized they would not be Caroline’s houseguests without impenetrable layers of intrigue.
Then, shortly before midnight, they heard a delicate knock on the front door.
Without waiting for it to be opened, a woman entered. She carried two bags, one Armani palmellato leather, the other from Trader Joe’s.
Caroline’s neighbor laughed and gave his guest a long hug. He introduced her as his fiancée.
The woman laughed as well. In a muted European accent, she told them the two of them had now been engaged just shy of seventeen years.
Caroline didn’t recognize her at first. Then the grace of the accent, the soft curl of her voice gave her away.
Here was the woman who had given her the app for her phone which allowed Caroline to effortlessly steal any car. The woman she had met at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Rancho Cucamonga.
Out in the dark behind her neighbor’s cabin, a few grey squirrels poked through clumps of golden yarrow.
