The old man chuckled. “Why don’t we go and discuss it with them? Talk it over. They’re new. They won’t want to make trouble.”

The old lady was pacing up and down the garden. “Imagine the noise and disruption. Loud radios. Diggers.” She plucked a dead leaf from the laurel bush and let her complaint hang in the air.

At any other time, when the sun was so bright it was difficult to see and the birds were full of song, Evan’s eavesdropping might have passed unnoticed.

But at half past eleven on that late-July morning after days and days of unremitting heat, the branch of the tree the boy was leaning on snapped and tumbled to the grass, taking Evan with it.

He let out a yell before hitting the ground, landing on his arm.

He began to cry.

The old man from next door called over the fence.

“Young man, are you hurt?”

Evan cried louder.

“Is your mother there?”

“No.” The boy breathed out his reply in the gaps between sobs. “She’s out.”

The fence panel that separated their gardens began to lift upward, and before Evan realized what was happening, the old man was kneeling beside him, examining his wrist.

“Looks swollen. Why don’t you come and sit with us until your mother gets back? Or at least let me put some ice on it.”

Evan did not want to go with the old man whose face reminded him of a well-worn football. Not when he had never met him before. But he’d only be a minute, and his arm was hurting, and his natural instinct was to let an adult take charge.

He stepped awkwardly across the boundary between the gardens, leaning on the concrete fence post with his good arm. The neighbors’ garden was much neater than the Lockwoods’. An ornamental pond with its own fountain commanded the center of the lawn. Several tall plants with blousy purple hoods stood by a wall. Inside the greenhouse, Evan saw plump tomatoes, ripe strawberries and a giant squash. A row of seedlings in pots. He followed the man through the back door.

Their kitchen smelled like his granny’s house, of air freshener and leftover roast beef.

The old lady ran him a glass of water. She was wearing an apron. There were lines on her face, like cracks in old soap. Her hair was permed, but the curls were loose waves. Her face was set into neutral.

As she put the glass on the table, it made a hard, heavy sound and Evan guessed that she was still annoyed with his parents.

But then she smiled at him and her face broke open, a shaft of sunlight through the clouds, and her eyes softened.

“I’m Audrina,” she said. “And this is Cooper. What’s your name?”

“Evan.”

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said.