When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike home from basketball practice on winter evenings, the cold air rushing against my face, my legs pumping faster in the growing darkness. I passed house after house in my neighborhood, the windows glowing with an internal light, the TVs playing, the families gathering in a kitchen or a dining room. Instead of watching the sidewalk in front of me, my eyes trailed across the lawns, hoping to catch a glimpse of what went on inside.

Why?

My parents divorced when I was six. My dad came around, most of the time, and he always sent the support payments for my sister and me. I always envied those kids with complete families, the ones I imagined talking and laughing around a bountiful table. I even fantasized about the father stepping in and telling one of the kids to finish their peas or not to talk so loud. I didn’t care because the father was there, the family was complete.

I watched those houses go by, and even the blue TV glow looked like a beacon of warmth and love.

When Jake was born, I continued to look in windows. When I was on runs through our neighborhood or coming home from work, my eyes were still drawn to the light from inside other people’s houses. They looked tranquil and safe and warm. . . .

Until one day I took the garbage out to the curb at our house. And when I turned around to walk back up the driveway, one of those moments occurred—they’re rare, but they do happen—when I saw my life, my house, the way everybody else did. I saw the warm glow from the kitchen. I saw Emily holding Jake. I saw the TV glowing blue in the corner. And I understood that my life looked like those lives I’d been observing all those years. Why did I need to spy on others when my own life was the nest, the hearth, the cocoon?

After Emily and Jake were gone, I started looking again.

When Grendel came to live with me, I started taking him to the dog park specifically because it wasn’t the same as walking through a neighborhood. There were no houses to peek into. And there would be other people to talk to. Real people, not silhouettes through a lighted window.

But Grendel’s temperament and my own lack of interest in carrying out forced social interaction with strangers at the park drove me to walk through the subdivision where Sophia Greenfield lived as the sun went down and families and couples gathered at home for their evenings together. All over again I was that kid pedaling home from basketball practice, the one on the sidewalk but with his face pressed against the metaphoric glass, hoping some of the warmth and glow from inside the house would light a spark inside me.