Dedra Haldane is seventy-four. She has lived next door to me since 1995. She wears gardening clogs year-round, even to church. And in thirty years, she has never once told me something that wasn’t so.
She sat down at my kitchen table and folded her hands.
“Darcy was at your mailbox this morning,” she said. “Talking to the Pattersons from across the street. She told them you’ve been lonely since Leif. She said her mother moved in to look after you.”
“To look after me.”
“Her words. She said you weren’t coping, Hillary.” Dedra looked at her hands. “She said it very kindly. That’s what bothered me.”
I understood it then. All of it.
Darcy wasn’t just moving a piano into my house.
She was moving a story into my neighborhood.
Every person who heard that story would look at me with that soft, pitying face. Poor Hillary. Poor lonely widow. Thank goodness somebody’s looking after her.
And nobody pities a woman and then believes her when she says she’s being pushed out of her own home.
That evening, Tuesday, September 30th, Grady called.
“Darcy says you’re being cold to her mom.”
“I’m being polite to a guest in my living room.”
“She’s not a guest. She’s family.” He sighed into the phone. “Can’t you just let it go?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re never home anyway,” he said. “What do you even care?”
I had been home every single day since the ship docked.
I had been home for thirty-four years before that.
“Good night, Grady,” I said.
I didn’t argue with him. I learned a long time ago that you don’t argue with somebody who has only heard one side.
You wait.
And then you let them hear the other side. Once.
That night, at 11:40, I woke up to the sound of the piano.
Very softly.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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