Harold Dennison came to my front door that Friday.
I almost didn’t open it. I watched him through the peephole for a long time. He was standing on my welcome mat in his cardigan, looking older than I remembered. Smaller. He had his hat in his hands, turning it around and around by the brim.
I opened the door.
“Mrs. Whitaker,” he said. He cleared his throat. “May I have five minutes?”
I didn’t invite him in. I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind me. Birdie was inside watching cartoons.
He stood there for a long moment without saying anything. He looked at the cottonwood tree over my roof. He looked at his shoes.
“I owe you an apology,” he finally said. “A real one. Not the kind I usually give.”
I waited.
“I called Pell & Associates on Monday morning. I told them the Association is withdrawing all collection efforts against your account. The fines are canceled. All of them. The attorney’s fees too. Every dollar. There will be no lien. There was never going to be a lien, honestly. That was the lawyer’s language. I should never have let him send it.”
I stared at him.
“There’s something else,” he said. His voice got rough. “That culvert. Under Ten Mile Road. Four years ago, a resident at a board meeting asked us to put a locked grate over the opening. She said it was dangerous. That a child could crawl in there. The estimate was $4,200.”
He swallowed hard.
“I voted it down. I said it was a waste of the reserve fund. I said nobody’s child would ever go down in that gully. I said it wasn’t the Association’s problem.”
He looked up at me, and his eyes were wet.
“I stood under that streetlight on Saturday night and watched them carry your little girl up that hill in a basket, and all I could think about was that $4,200. And about how I spent three months chasing her and her crow, taking pictures over your fence like some kind of—” He stopped. “I took those pictures, Mrs. Whitaker. Not the Hendersons. Me. I stood on the walking path and photographed a grieving child feeding a bird.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t trust my voice.
“My wife used to feed the sparrows,” he said quietly. “Every winter. She’d put out seed on the back fence. Back before there was an HOA. Before there were rules about it. After she passed, I couldn’t stand to look at them. The birds. I guess I didn’t want anybody else to have what I didn’t have anymore.”
He held out a small brown paper bag.
I took it. I opened it.
Unsalted peanuts.
“For the bird,” he said. “From me.”
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