We filled out forms.
So many forms.
Margaret made tea.
I pretended to like it.
She knew I didn’t.
“You drink it like medicine,” she said one night.
“It tastes like flowers got nervous and drowned.”
She laughed so hard she had to sit down.
That laugh became one of my favorite sounds.
A few neighbors noticed.
At first, they watched from behind curtains.
Then from driveways.
Then from sidewalks.
Mrs. Delaney from across the street brought a tray of biscuits one evening and said, “I had extra.”
She did not have extra.
She had made them fresh.
Mr. Ruiz from the corner showed up with a ladder and said, “That gutter is too high for you to reach safely.”
I looked at him.
“I’m nineteen.”
He looked at his own gray hair and shrugged.
“I own the ladder. That makes me management.”
By the fifth day, we had four people helping.
By the seventh day, we had nine.
By the ninth day, someone taped a handwritten sign to Margaret’s porch railing.
