All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Regret Clause;One Year Together. One Love : Chapter 271 - Chapter 280

In June of the twenty-eighth year, Don and Ernest walked to the north boundary.They had walked to the north boundary many times—the Thursday walk included the kitchen garden, the quince trees, the approach to the north boundary as a regular part of the circuit. But this walk was different: it was a Saturday morning walk, specifically to the north boundary, the walk with the specific intention of standing at the quince grove and being inside it.The quince grove in its thirteenth year—the thirteenth year of the seedlings' management, the twenty-eighth year of the arrangement, the twenty-fourth year of the original two trees—was the grove that Thomas had described in the fourteenth year's June interview. Not the fully established grove of thirty years—that was two years away, the round number that Thomas had named as the point when the grove would be fully legible as what it was going to be. The thirteenth year of the managed seedlings was the grove in its approach to completion: the t

January of the thirtieth year arrived with the quality of a January that was also a threshold—not a threshold into something new, but a threshold into the next stage of something that had been continuing for a long time.Ernest was in the east wing with his coffee when the thirtieth year began. Don was in the study with his journal. The estate was in its winter intention—the foxgloves in the crowns, their foliage flattened against the ground, waiting for the spring; the quince grove in its dormancy, the bare branches of the trees tracing patterns against the January sky; the south wall roses in Ruth's November pruning, the stems reduced to their framework, waiting for the spring growth; the ground preparing for the thirty-first spring, the frost breaking up the soil, the rain soaking into the roots.He thought about thirty years. He thought about the first January—the first January of the arrangement, which had been the second January of his life at the estate, which had been the Janu

January of the thirty-first year arrived as all Januaries arrived: without announcement, in the continuation of the previous evening, the first morning of the new number indistinguishable from the last morning of the old except in the journal's heading and in the specific quality of awareness that Ernest brought to it.He had been awake since six. The bedroom light through the east window was the specific light of January in the thirty-first year — not the first-year's discovery-light, not the fifth-year's settling-light, not the fifteenth-year's established-light. It was the light with thirty years of January mornings in it. He had lain in the bed for thirty minutes, not sleeping but not yet rising, in the condition that had become the condition of the thirty-first year's mornings: the consciousness of being inside the accumulation, the awareness that the day he was about to enter was not a new day in the sense that the first year's days had been new, but the day that contained all i

Ruth came on the second Monday of March with something she had found in the ground.Not an object — not the archaeological find of a previous occupation, which would have been the estate's written history rather than the ground's account. What she had found was a condition: a section of the east lower field that had a specific quality she had not noticed in ten years of managing the estate.Ten years. Ruth had been the estate's manager for ten years. Ernest thought about this as he watched her come through the kitchen gate — the specific quality of Ruth at ten years, which was the quality of someone who had moved through the establishing and the settling and the early depth into the full continuing. She was not Thomas at thirty-five years. She was Ruth at ten years old, which was its own quality, the quality of someone who had learned the ground and who was now learning what the ground could teach beyond the learning.She came to the kitchen gate and said: "The east lower field. I wan

Ruth came on the second Monday of April in the thirty-first year.She came at nine. She came to the kitchen garden gate. She had the quality of the tenth year of her tenure — not the fourth year's beginning-of-settled-knowing, not the eighth year's depth-of-the-accumulation. The tenth year had the quality of someone who had moved through the establishing-and-settling into the full continuing. Not Thomas's thirty-five-year ease, which was beyond what ten years could produce. Ruth's ten-year quality: the knowing that was in the body and the intellect simultaneously, the doing-knowledge and the thinking-knowledge speaking the same language.Ernest watched her come through the gate. He had been watching Ruth come through the kitchen garden gate for ten years. The first year's Ruth had been tentative, careful, still learning the estate's rhythms, still learning the plants, still learning the ground. The fourth year's Ruth had been established, confident, the manager who knew what she was d