Escaping Los Angeles

I am not a worrier, not given to hear the call of catastrophe. In the middle of the night on Monday, amid the squeal of the wind, my husband got up to take down some chimes ringing through the dark. I laughed: What a ridiculous time to have wind chimes. The wind moaned, whimpered; doors shook. It made no sense that we lived here. We could barely afford this house, which was, in any case, a two-bedroom too small for a family of four. We had been entranced by the view of Silver Lake, and Atwater Village, and the mountains beyond them.