Over the next few weeks, Ruth learned his name from the mailman. Daniel Hale. He worked long, odd hours and came home after dark, often still wearing pale blue hospital scrubs.
He never waved. He never stopped to chat. When she called “Good morning!” across the hedge, he nodded and hurried inside.
“Maybe he just doesn’t like old ladies,” Ruth told her cat, Biscuit, who did not seem interested in the question.
Still, she kept trying. It wasn’t in her nature to stop.
When the first snow came, she left a thermos of chicken soup on his porch with a note: For a cold night. — Ruth. The empty thermos came back two days later, washed and dried, on her own step. There was no note.
At Thanksgiving, she knocked to invite him for dinner. He said he was working. She suspected he wasn’t.
Her own son, Michael, didn’t come for Thanksgiving either. He lived three states away and had a big job and two busy teenagers. He called on Sunday evenings, when he remembered.
“Mom, you shouldn’t be living alone in that big house,” he said on one of those calls. “Karen and I have been talking. There’s a lovely senior community near us. You’d have people around.”
“I have people around,” Ruth said.
“Who? The cat?”
She thought of the dark window next door. She didn’t answer.
“Just think about it,” Michael said. “I’m going to send you some brochures.”
After she hung up, Ruth sat in her late husband’s armchair for a long time. Walter would have known what to say to the strange man next door. Walter could talk to anyone.
She looked out the window.
Daniel’s porch light was on. And there, on his front step, sat something she hadn’t expected.
It was a small paper bag, with her name written on it in careful block capitals.