Chapter 5 - The La Jolla Dawn
The sun broke over Mount Soledad at 6:45 on Sunday morning, casting a long, golden light across the red-tiled roof of my grandmother’s cottage in La Jolla. The air smelled of sage, damp earth, and the clean, cold salt of the Pacific that rolled up the cliffside in thick, white plumes.
I sat on the low stone wall of the front garden, a mug of black coffee held between my hands, my feet tucked into a pair of warm woolen socks Dad had bought for me at the base exchange. For the first time in three years, my phone sat in my pocket without a tracking app, its screen dark and silent unless I chose to touch the glass.
The cottage was exactly as Grandma had left it: the old wind chimes hanging from the eave, the blue wooden shutters slightly faded by the salt air, and the small gravel path lined with wild rosemary that brushed against my ankles.
Dad came out of the front door, wearing an old Navy sweatshirt and a pair of worn jeans. He carried a toolkit in his left hand and a fresh piece of cedar siding in his right. He walked over to the side window where the old frame had begun to rot from the winter storms.
"The wood is still solid at the core," he said, setting the box down on the grass. "It just needs the skin replaced. A few hours of work, and it’ll hold out the weather for another twenty years."
I watched him place the level against the frame, his movements steady, unhurried, and perfectly aligned with the logic of the tools he held. "Dad?"
"Yeah, Quinn?"
"What happens to the house on Orange Avenue?"
"The bank will take it by the end of the quarter," he said, without looking back. "The corporation is already entering administrative receivership. Detective Vance told me this morning that Grant’s mother has hired a criminal attorney from Los Angeles, but the evidence from the safe is too clean. The prosecutor isn't offering a plea."
He picked up his hammer, the sound of the first strike echoing against the stone walls of the cottage with a sharp, clear thwack.
"You don't need to look back at that street, Quinn," he said, setting the next nail into the cedar. "The coordinates have been cleared. The lane is open."
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I took a slow breath, the cold sea air filling my lungs without the tightness, without the terror, without the mechanical crowing sound that had nearly taken my life on the floor of the Coronado hall three days ago. The bruises on my wrists were still dark, but under the warm morning sun, the skin had already begun to turn the pale, healing yellow of a winter that was finally running out of rain.
I stood up from the wall, set my coffee down on the stone step, and walked over to hold the other end of the timber while my father drove the remaining nails into the frame.
