Chapter 5: Inside the Door
The living room was clean but spare.
A secondhand sofa.
A folding table against the wall with three backpacks lined up underneath it.
A small television mounted too high on the wall, the kind of placement that said it had been moved more than once and this was just where it had ended up.
On the sofa, a boy of about ten looked up from a book.
A girl a few years younger sat cross-legged on the floor with a tablet, headphones around her neck.
From somewhere down the hall came the sound of the youngest — the toddler I'd seen in the newspaper photo, though he'd be closer to three now.
"Mom?" the boy said.
"It's okay, Caleb.
This is our neighbor, Mrs.
Calloway.
Go finish your chapter."
He looked at me for a second longer than was comfortable, the way kids do when they're deciding whether to trust someone.
Then he went back to his book.
Eloise gestured toward the kitchen.
I followed her.
She filled two glasses of water without asking and set one in front of me.
We sat across from each other at a small table.
"You read about the fire," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"I did."
"I figured you would." She wrapped both hands around her glass.
"I would have."
"Why didn't you just tell me?" I said.
"When I first caught you — why not just explain?"
"Because I didn't want your pity," she said.
"I wanted one normal afternoon where my kids could swim and I wasn't the woman with the burned-down house and the month-to-month lease and the—" She stopped.
"I just wanted one afternoon that felt normal."
"I understand that," I said.
"I do.
But Eloise, you came back six times.
And every time we called, you made us feel like we were being ridiculous."
"I know." She didn't look away.
"That was wrong.
I was defensive and I handled it badly and I knew it every time I hung up the phone." She paused.
"I told myself it wasn't hurting anyone.
I told myself the pool was just sitting there.
I told myself a lot of things."
"People usually do," I said.
She almost smiled at that.
"The thing I keep coming back to," I said, "is that we would have said yes.
If you'd knocked on the door and explained — we would have said yes.
We're not unreasonable people."
Eloise looked at her water glass.
"I know that now."
"You knew it then too, I think."
A long pause.
"Yes," she said.
"I think I did."
From down the hall, the toddler called out.
*Mama.* Eloise tilted her head toward the sound but didn't get up.
"His name is Theo," she said.
"He was eighteen months when the fire happened.
He doesn't remember it.
The other two do." She paused.
"Sophie still won't sleep with her door closed."
I didn't say anything.
There wasn't anything useful to say.
"I'm not telling you that so you'll feel sorry for me," Eloise said.
"I'm telling you because you asked why I kept coming back.
That's why.
Because Caleb and Sophie remember what it was like to lose everything in one night, and I have spent two years trying to give them something that feels steady.
Something that feels like it belongs to us." She looked up.
"Your pool felt like that.
For a few hours, it felt like we were just a normal family having a normal summer."
The refrigerator hummed.
Down the hall, Theo called again, louder.
Eloise pushed back her chair.
"I'll be one second," she said.
She disappeared down the hall.
I sat at the table and looked around the kitchen.
A crayon drawing taped to the cabinet.
A magnetic calendar on the fridge with appointments written in three different colors.
A coffee mug on the counter that said *Best Mom* in faded letters, the kind that comes from a school fundraiser.
Eloise came back with Theo on her hip.
He was dark-haired and solemn-looking, studying me with the focused suspicion of a three-year-old.
"Hi, Theo," I said.
He buried his face in his mother's shoulder.
Eloise sat back down.
"He's shy."
"My youngest was the same way," I said.
We sat there for a moment, the three of us, in the quiet of the kitchen.
"I want to suggest something," I said.
"And I want you to hear me out before you say anything."
Eloise looked at me.
"My kids are at camp for the last two weeks of August.
Dan and I are home, but we're not using the pool much during the week.
If you want to bring your kids over — properly, with permission, when we know you're coming — I'd like to offer that."
Eloise went very still.
"You don't have to do that," she said.
"I know I don't."
"After everything—"
"After everything," I said, "I'd rather be the kind of neighbor I'd want to have than the kind of neighbor this situation almost turned me into."
Theo lifted his head from his mother's shoulder and looked at me again.
This time he didn't hide.
Eloise's jaw tightened.
She pressed her lips together.
Her eyes went bright.
"Okay," she said.
Her voice was steady but only just.
"Okay.
Thank you."
I finished my water and stood up.
"Saturday morning," I said.
"Ten o'clock.
Bring sunscreen."
I walked back down the hall, past Caleb still reading on the sofa, past Sophie who had fallen asleep with her headphones still around her neck.
I let myself out.
The evening air was cooler than I expected.
I stood on Eloise's front step for a moment before walking back down the path.
May you like
I thought the hard part was over.
I was wrong.
