Chapter 2 - The Neighbor's Rehearsed Concern
Our neighbor came out onto his steps in sweatpants and a gray hoodie, like he'd been waiting for a reason. Dale Brenner. He looked at the flooded driveway. Then at my mother. Then back at the water.
"Everything okay over here?"
The concern in his voice had edges, like he'd practiced it in a mirror.
Dale had lived in the house on our left for six years. Fifty years old, thick through the shoulders, always grinning when there was someone around to see it. He ran the block party every summer. He went door to door for the Christmas light fund. He left notes in your mailbox if your grass got an inch too tall.
I'd never liked him.
But until that morning, I'd never been scared of him.
"Somebody wrote on our driveway," I said.
Dale leaned forward at the waist, squinting, like the letters weren't three feet tall. "Aw, that's awful."
My mother's fingers closed around my wrist. I knew what she was telling me. Don't argue. Don't make it worse.
"Kids, probably," Dale said, shaking his head slowly.
"At four in the morning?"
"Teenagers do dumb stuff. You remember being that age."
"Do you have cameras?"
His eyes flicked toward his garage and came back. "No."
That was a lie. There was a black security camera bolted under his gutter, aimed straight down the street. I'd watched him put it up last summer on a ladder, whistling the whole time.
Dale saw where I was looking. "That thing's been dead for months."
"Convenient."
His grin lost about half its width. "Excuse me?"
Mom pulled gently on my arm. "Nadia. Inside."
Dale looked at her when she spoke. "Your mother should be careful, wandering around out here at night."
I stopped walking. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing by it."
"She wasn't wandering. She was on her knees cleaning my driveway."
"I just meant in general." He backed toward his door, hands raised, still smiling. "This neighborhood's a little different from what she's used to."
My mother's grip tightened until it almost hurt.
May you like
And I understood. Not everything. Not yet. But enough.
Dale knew exactly who those two words were for. Because he was the one who wrote them.
