Rufus had enough on his plate with the winery, the girls, his building projects, and now the dissolution of Rowe House Architects PLLC. Still, there remained this block of time when he couldn’t work because he was out of that kind of energy; he couldn’t be with Judith and Maisie because they were in bed; and he couldn’t sleep because he felt deprived of warm, intelligent human contact.
Lella was always on guard about the demands of men and the tendency they had–in her experience–to want to consume her entirely and rapidly until they exhausted all her secrets and then, settle into a complacent attitude of ownership without possession. In this case, her departure would head off that deterioration. Rufus’s busy schedule was another form of protection.
She sat on a kitchen stool at the islan
