She limped to her car, pausing on the bottom step. “Maybe it’s for the best.” She glanced at our car, sitting at an odd angle. The tires were once again cut clean through.

“Seems like people don’t really want you around here anyway.”

Mom kicked off her house shoes, and, with an angry grunt, dove forward. I grabbed a handful of her shirt, trying to keep her from leaping off the porch and pummeling Mrs. Redmond.

“Mom! It’s not worth it! Stop!”

Mrs. Redmond grinned with air of superiority, like she’d won this little battle. As she sped off, we retreated into the house. Mom was angry-crying as she called Mo to tell her what happened. I sat down on the floor and thumbed through the paperwork Mrs. Redmond had left behind.

“There’s an eviction notice,” I said, puzzled by all the legal terminology on the paper. “How can they evict us if this is my house?”

“You gotta pay taxes,” Mom said while she still had Mo on the phone.

“Yeah, but shouldn’t Mrs. Redmond have known that? Like, wouldn’t there be notices or something? They skipped right to eviction?” I wasn’t an expert, but it didn’t make sense to me. I flipped through page after page of paperwork but didn’t find any notices about taxes owed or past due bills. Some of the paperwork had lines that were blacked out. There was no phone number or address for the bank. “How do we even know who we’re supposed to talk to about this?” Frustrated, I tossed the papers back onto the table. “I need some air.”

I went and stood on the porch. This wasn’t right. I couldn’t just sit around and wait for Mrs. Redmond to show back up, police in tow. I thought about calling Nyx to see if she could give me a ride, but a Lyft was only five minutes away. I set a pickup, slipped back inside, shoved the stack of paperwork into my bag, and kissed my mom on the top of the head.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’ll be back. Try not to worry too much, okay?”

I went out the front door and got into my Lyft.

There were a half-dozen banks in Rhinebeck and I decided to go to all of them with my ID and Mrs. Redmond’s paperwork to see what I could find out.

The first three stops turned up nothing. It took a half an hour at each place for them to check their records and tell me they didn’t have any information for me. As the afternoon drug on, I was afraid I wouldn’t get through my list before the other banks closed. I walked between the different locations, my ankle throbbing, frustration building with each dead end.