There’s not much to obstruct your view. The town of Oakwood planted maples on the boulevards, between the sidewalk and the curb, to give every homeowner a tree—two, if you had a corner lot as we did—but they’d only put them in a year ago. You could wrap your hand around the trunk, thumb and index finger touching. Someday, long after Sarah and I—and probably our kids, too—are gone from the planet, they may throw a lot of shade, but for now, they’re the kind of trees that create little work for neighborhood youngsters looking for raking money. And there are few cars parked on the street, except for the ones in front of Trixie’s place, two doors down. She runs an accounting business from home and has clients dropping in. Many of the houses come with double, or even triple, garages, and no one’s renting out their basement.

While I waited to see whether Sarah would remember to retrieve her keys, Earl, the guy who lives across from Trixie’s, came around the corner in his pickup. He backed into his driveway, got out, opened the garage, and started unloading bags of potting soil from the back of the pickup. When he spotted me leaning against the Camry, I waved, and he nodded back, but not all that invitingly. It had been my intention to stroll over and shoot the breeze, but now I held back. Then Earl looked over his shoulder, I guess to see whether I was still watching him. When he saw that I was, I suddenly felt awkward. So I said, “Hey.”

He nodded again, kind of shrugged, and when he didn’t turn away, I crossed the street.

“Hey, Zack,” he said. Earl wasn’t big on conversation. You had to drag it out of him. His head, which he shaved, gleamed with sweat, and his T-shirt was damp. The end of a cigarette was stuck between his lips. Earl was never without a smoke.

I shrugged. “Hey. How’s things?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Keeping busy.”

We were both quiet for a moment. I broke the silence with a question of startling brilliance.

“Back from the garden center again?”

Earl smiled. “Oh yeah. Never a day I’m not down there.” He paused. “So how goes the writing?”

“Not a bad day.” I think Earl had a hard time understanding how I can make a living sitting inside the house all day, not getting my hands dirty. I said, “Walked down to the corner, sent off my property taxes.”

Earl looked off in the direction of the mailbox. “How’s the house?”

I shook my head. “I’ve gone through three tubes of caulking on our bedroom window. I don’t even bother to put the ladder away. Every time it rains, a little more water gets in.”

“You complain?”