September came in with the first cool mornings, the way autumn comes to a lake — not announced, just arriving with the light. The water lost its deep summer blue for a higher, clearer tone, the reeds began to brown at their tops, and the leaves started their long decision at the tops of the maples along the shore, one branch going gold before the others committed. The garden gave up its last tomatoes in the second week, heavy and warm off the vine, and Sophie and Aaron put them up in jars, the two of them working the hot kitchen in the pattern they had learned from all the putting-up that had been done in that house — or in his mother's kitchen, or in the kitchens of people who knew what a harvest was for.
"Your mother brought us a jar last spring," Sophie said, setting a row of them on the shelf. "Now we have our own row."
"We have our own row," Aaron said.
"That's how it works," Sophie said. "Somebody carries it. Somebody gives it. Somebody keeps the fire."
