“You talked to her since last Saturday?” My father is exiting at Old Spanish Trail off Highway 288. To the right is the Houston Zoo and the Texas Medical Center and to the left is our old neighborhood. Where is this man taking me?

I asked him this morning when he came into my room talking about going somewhere, but all he said was “Just come on.” Normally, I wouldn’t let that fly. I mean, you gotta tell me something. But this morning I was happy to roll out. You see, I usually hoop Saturday mornings, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to touch a basketball since the championship. I’m not ready to face the game without my dream of going to the league.

“Yeah, briefly. We broke up,” I reply.

He puts on his left turn signal and looks in his left-wing mirror. My father is about as careful as careful gets when it comes to driving. Every move so precise, like he’s performing surgery or something. He finally takes a left on OST. Now we’re passing the corner store I used to ride my bike to for chips and soda. “I thought you said you really loved her.”

Where the hell did that come from? It’s like he’s speaking on her behalf. Like she’s somehow managed to possess his mouth like she’s possessed my mind. “I do . . . I did,” I say, all worked up. “But I’m trying not to.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry, wasn’t trying to pry,” he says.

If that’s not a lie, I think, but stay quiet, satisfied with him dropping it.

He takes a right on Scott Street, past a big, new stucco house under construction. The streets are poppin’. So many people out and about. We ride by three old men sitting on the porch of a pale-green, wooden house on blocks. Two little girls with pigtails trying to share a scooter on the sidewalk. Four dudes in a grassy driveway—two crouched down looking at something on a motorcycle and the other two eyeballing us as we roll by.

I’d forgotten how much my old neighborhood feels like a real community. How neighbors actually come out of their houses and talk to each other . . . even rely on one another. Man, the woman next door used to drop her little girl off with Angie all the time when her babysitter was running late and she had to be at work. And I don’t know how many times the old man on the other side of the house asked us to help jump-start his pickup. And this one time when my father forgot to pay the water bill, the dude who lived behind us let me hook up a hose to his house for a couple days. I always talk about missing my old house, but I’ve missed this neighborhood, too.

My father takes a left on Luca and parks.