Like the house looks happy." That's what she'd said 3 weeks ago, pressing her face against the kitchen window and staring at their front yard the way only a child can, not seeing what's there, but what could be. Marcus had looked at that yard, the patchy grass, the dead flower bed along the fence line, the cracked cement border that had been crumbling since before they moved in. And he had said the only thing a father can say when his little girl looks at him like that. I'll take care of it, baby. So, at 4:30 in the morning, Marcus Carter was in his backyard with a cup of coffee that had gone cold, a plan that was probably too ambitious, and a garden hose that he had borrowed from the shed because his own had sprung a leak two weeks ago, and he hadn't had time to replace it.
The shed hose was older. He noticed it felt stiff when he pulled it out. He noticed the coupling near the nozzle looked corroded. He noticed. And then because he was tired and had 14 things on his mind and Ava's birthday cake still needed to be ordered, he connected it anyway.
That was mistake number one. He worked for 2 hours before the sun fully came up, turning the soil in the flower bed, pulling weeds that had established what appeared to be a small civilization along the fence line, laying down the bags of fresh mulch he'd loaded into his truck the night before at the Home Depot on Peach Tree. By 7:00 a.m., he was sweating through his shirt, and the yard was starting to look like something he could be proud of. He dragged the hose from the side of the house, connected it to the spigot, and turned it on. The water pressure hit the nozzle hard.
The corroded coupling at the base cracked and before Marcus could process what was happening before his hand could move. Before his brain could send the signal to let go, the hose whipped sideways like something alive ripped itself out of his grip entirely and sent a full blast stream of water arching over the six-foot wooden fence that separated his yard from the one next door. Marcus stood there, heard the water hitting something solid on the other side, heard it running, and then he heard a very specific sound, the sound of someone's storm door swinging open. He closed his eyes. No.
Olivia Bennett had been awake for exactly 47 minutes. She knew this because she'd checked her phone when she first opened her eyes 6:21 a.m. and she was intimately familiar with the particular cruelty of her body's refusal to let her sleep past sunrise, no matter what time she'd gone to bed the night before. She had spent the previous 3 weeks repainting the side of her house, not because it desperately needed it. The old paint wasn't terrible, but because she needed something to do with her hands, something that started broken and ended fixed. Something she could control completely in a season of her life when almost everything else felt like it was sliding sideways.
She'd finished the last coat two days ago. She was proud of it. It was a clean, warm white with just enough warmth in the tone that it caught the morning light beautifully. She had stood outside yesterday evening with a glass of iced tea and looked at it for almost 10 full minutes, feeling something she hadn't felt in a while. Accomplished.
She was standing at her kitchen counter, waiting for her coffee maker to finish its cycle and scrolling mindlessly through her phone when she heard it. A sound like rushing water, then a wet smack against the side of her house, then the unmistakable sound of water running down siding. Olivia set her phone on the counter, walked to the kitchen window, looked outside. Water was pouring down the left side of her house, the freshly painted side in long, steady rivullets soaking into the wood trim, running down the foundation, pooling in the mulch at the base. She stood very still for one full second.
Then she grabbed her coffee mug. It was a reflex, an act of self-preservation, and she walked to the back door. Marcus heard the door open and turned around. She was standing at the fence line, looking at the water running down her wall. He had seen her before in the way you see neighbors you've never spoken to.
Walking to her car in the morning, picking up a package off her porch once briefly at the end of the block where Mr. Henderson's dog had gotten loose and half the neighborhood had come out to help corner it. He knew she was the woman next door. He knew her name was Olivia because he'd seen it on a piece of mail that had been misdelivered to his box last spring. That was the extent of his knowledge. He didn't know what he expected her to do.