4: The Archipelago

 

We arrived at Sexton Road on the afternoon of July 8, 2026. There was no tea ceremony. There was no quiet moment on the porch. There was only the unlocking of the gate, the opening of the lockbox, and the discovery that the property came with a ring of seven keys. Every door had its own lock. The house had a key. The studio had a key. The garage had a key. The accessory unit had a key. Other doors appeared to have keys simply because no one had yet thought to make them match. It felt strangely special. Each building on the property was its own little island: the house, the ADU, the future RV area where another ADU might eventually go, the studio, the garage, the freestanding garden bathroom. Together, they formed an archipelago. Our own private chain of islands within the broader banana belt.

We walked around in a daze, trying doors, peering through windows, and attempting to understand what, exactly, we now owned. Then I remembered the U-Haul. The truck had to be emptied. The Highlander had to come off the trailer. The trailer and truck had to be returned to two different U-Haul locations in Santa Rosa. This required finding a flat street somewhere in Sebastopol where I could separate the trailer from the truck. The entire convoy could not be backed up. It could barely turn. Sexton Road was not designed for a twenty-foot rental truck towing an SUV and operated by a man who had spent the previous two days being deafened by engine noise. The plan was simple. We would unload everything into the garage.

Then I would find a flat road, unhitch the trailer, unload the Highlander, and have Erin drive it back to the house. Sava would follow me so we could return the trailer first, then the truck. After that, we would get something to eat and begin unpacking.

Easy.

Unfortunately, we had just arrived at a mysterious overgrown property full of fruit trees and unknown plants. No one was interested in the truck. Erin began photographing leaves and identifying trees with Google. “Is that a redwood?” There was a pause.

“Giant sequoia!”

Then came the scream.

“We have a giant sequoia on our property!” She began dancing.

“I found another apple tree!” Grey called from somewhere deep in the vegetation.

Sava was standing at the back of the acre verbally designing her house. “So, listen,” she said. “Just hear me out. My house would go over here.” She gestured toward the area where Tom and Robin had imagined parking their RV. “It would come this way and extend down there. My bathroom would be here, and the bedroom would face this way.”

“That seems a little big, sweetie,” I said.

She exhaled sharply.

“Can you just listen without editing my plans? Just listen. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely. I love the vision. Did you see we have a giant sequoia?”

As a family, we wandered around taking pictures, tasting fruit, and making discoveries. The apples were dry. The Asian pears had no sweetness. The plums were not ready. The blackberries were either unripe or individually wrapped in spiderwebs. We found what we believed was a guava, which turned out to be a walnut. There were grapevines but no grapes. None of this mattered. We had fruit. We had land. We had a giant sequoia. Grey immediately began creating private places throughout the property. He placed chairs beneath the two weeping willows and another between the sequoia and the liquidambar trees. Coco was equally thrilled, racing across the property and plunging her nose into gopher holes in the hope that the land had come stocked with small mammals for her personal entertainment. It had. It felt like I alone remained aware of the U-Haul deadline.

I began unloading. At first, I waited for everyone to join me. Then I stopped waiting. I dragged large boxes down the ramp and into the garage. I lifted objects too heavy to carry alone simply because they were the next things blocking the path. I hauled a large Buddha statue into the backyard while privately questioning whether enlightenment was supposed to be this heavy. Erin came to help. The children helped intermittently, in the manner of children who are technically participating but who remain engaged elsewhere. Sava was preoccupied with the space that would become her temporary bedroom. The house she had been designing at the back of the property did not yet exist. What did exist was the breakfast nook.

The breakfast nook was an improvised room off the kitchen with windows on three sides, a built-in dry bar, and no real separation from the rest of the house. It was one of the most visible spaces in the house. Her bed would be only a few feet from the refrigerator. This was very different from the modern garden house she had imagined, with a bedroom, walk-in closet, tiled shower, and separate area for her bunny, Bo. The reality was a mattress near the kitchen and a three-foot-by-three-foot rabbit enclosure at the end of that bed. Bo quickly covered the enclosure in rabbit droppings. Sava’s belongings could not be unpacked because most of our storage had not yet arrived. Her boxes remained stacked around her. Her makeup table was wedged beside a window near the refrigerator. It was not glamorous. It did not look like California. By most objective measures, it looked worse than the room she had left behind. The fantasy of living with her boyfriend and their rabbit in a lush garden, perhaps eventually watching her future children run through flowers, had collided with a bed on the floor beside a refrigerator. Her spirits dropped almost immediately. Most of the truck was unloaded by Erin and me while the kids explored and ate disappointing fruit.

Eventually, the truck was empty. What remained was an oddly selected assortment of belongings. Most of our possessions were still in the POD, which would not arrive for another ten days. We had beds and sheets. Good. We had travel clothes and toiletries. Also good. Because the Airbnb supplies had been packed last, we had dishes, pans, and some basic kitchen equipment. We had two outdoor couches without cushions. We had one indoor couch without feet. We had a kitchen table and all four legs, but no screws to attach them. We had achieved the furniture equivalent of a ransom note assembled from unrelated magazines.

Still, we were happy. We would make it work.

The following morning, I woke in our new house and instinctively turned on the tap to fill the kettle. The smell reached me almost immediately. Rotten eggs. Not faintly. Not imaginatively. The water smelled as though something sulfurous had died underground and was now being delivered directly to the kitchen. I let it run. Perhaps the pipes had been sitting unused. Perhaps the well simply needed to clear. The smell did not improve. I tasted a small amount. It tasted almost normal, which somehow made the experience worse. Technically drinkable, perhaps. Emotionally undrinkable. Our water bottles were empty, so there would be no morning coffee. Instead, I ate dry tea leaves one by one. This was not satisfying. While chewing them, I noticed another smell. This one was stronger. It seemed to be coming from the children’s bathroom.

At first it reminded me of the occasional sewer odor we had experienced in our old house. Then I opened the bathroom door. The smell was overwhelming. I reached for the exhaust fan. The control was a small plastic dial beside the light switch. The instant I touched it, the knob cracked in half and fell into my hand. I tried turning the exposed metal post with my fingers. It would not move. So I went to open the little window inside the shower. I released the latch and pulled. The entire window came out of its track and landed in my right hand. I stood there holding it while the odor burned my eyes. This was not good.

I placed the window back into the opening while holding my breath, and I backed out shutting the door behind me and exhaled.

These were problems for later.

The water was for later.

The sewer smell was for later.

The broken fan was for later.

The removable window was definitely for later.

For now, I needed coffee. It was time to find a café and begin our first full day in paradise.