“Where’s here?”

“Emerald. It’s just what we needed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A place to settle down. We’ll be happy here. You’ll see.”

“Why here?”

She was quiet for a few minutes. “Someone told me about it once, and I thought it sounded perfect.”

She drove on and then pulled up alongside a row of attached town homes. She turned off the ignition, held the keys in her hand, and tilted her head back on the headrest. A white pickup truck drove up beside us. An older man got out, thrust his hands into his pockets, and began jiggling their contents. My mother puckered her lips in the mirror, folded a tuft of black hair behind one ear, and climbed out of the car. He was still busy digging in his pockets when she tapped him on the shoulder.

Even from a distance, I could see his features soften. His hands moved in a clumsy way, like they weren’t attached to his body. Her back was to me, but I knew exactly what she was doing. One eyebrow was slightly arched and her mouth was poised in a halfsmile, making her cheek look round and full. She put both hands on her hips and curved her shoulders inward.

He was no match for my mother.

Within minutes, she talked him down several hundred dollars and an hour later we were unloading our things into our newly-leased town home. It was sandwiched between two others units, which eliminated the possibility of any natural light and made it feel colorless. The only saving grace was a small porch off the back of the living room. My mother was so involved in unpacking that I managed to sneak out onto the porch without her noticing.

I found an old plastic chair a previous tenant had left behind, but it was caked in thick black grime, so I sat on the wooden planks instead. Everywhere I looked, I saw green. It was still warm, but the air now had a snap to it. I closed my eyes and reinvented the porch in my mind, filling it with people I wished were there. I saw my grandmother and Franny sitting at a picnic table eating hamburgers. I pretended that it was windy and the napkins were flying away and that ketchup dripped onto my plate and a bee buzzed by my ear. It took a few minutes before I realized that the sounds I was hearing were not in my head.

I opened my eyes and heard it again, a soft chirp coming from the other side of the wall that divided our porch from our neighbor’s. I peeked around, not sure what I would find, and there was a girl, very small but probably my age.