Her eyes narrowed in a way that was pretty creepy. “Don’t insult me. I can give you the twelve dollars I usually pay,” she argued.

Her offer only made me want to give her a hug. “Please don’t insult me,” I said gently, trying to sound playful. “I’m not going to charge you anything.”

She let out this exaggerated, long sigh that told me I’d won.

“Point me in the direction of your broom, please.”

She did, and five minutes later, I had managed to sweep up the hair and use her handheld vacuum to pick up the fine clippings left behind. Noticing that I was wrapping up the haircut, Josh and Louie were standing in the living room… staring at the old woman. And the old woman was staring back at them. I was 99 percent sure none of them blinked.

“I’m hungry,” Louie finally said, keeping that blue-eyed gaze on our neighbor.

Packing my shears back into their case, I picked up my keys and raised my eyebrows at him, but he still had his attention on the woman. “We can start on dinner in a minute.” I walked toward them and smiled at our neighbor, who had, at least, stopped staring back. “We should get going before you can start hearing their stomachs grumbling. Let me know if you need anything, okay, Miss Pearl?”

She nodded, her eyes meeting mine before shifting back to Louie for a moment. “I will. Thank you for the ‘do.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I have your number on my freezer,” she let me know as if I hadn’t seen it when I’d first gone into her kitchen. “Y’all ever need something, you let me know.”

“That’s really nice of you, thank you. Same goes for you.” I nudged Josh who had moved to stand next to me. Oh dear God, his mouth was cracked, his eyes narrowed as he took in the woman who was older than his grandparents. “It was nice seeing you.” I poked at Josh again.

“Bye, miss,” he kind of mumbled, still dazzled and lost in his trance.

I made my eyes go wide at Louie who had at least managed to catch on to us leaving. “Bye, lady,” he added, shyly.

Lady. God.

I smiled at Miss Pearl and waved the boys toward the door, trying to ask myself where I’d gone wrong with them. Staring. Calling our neighbor “lady.” My mom would be horrified. We filed out, and I made sure to lock the bottom lock on the door before closing it behind me. We made it to the street before Louie did it. “How old is she? A hundred?” he asked, completely curious, without the smallest hint of smart-ass in his tone.

If he hadn’t been holding my dominant hand, I would have smacked myself in the forehead. “Louie!”

“Don’t be dumb. She’s like ninety-five, right, Aunt Di?” Josh butted in.

Oh my God. “I don’t know. Probably, but you’re not supposed to ask that kind of stuff, guys. Jes—Sheesh.”

“Why?” they both asked at the same time.

We made it to the other side of the street before I answered, “Because… it’s not very nice to say she’s ninety-five or a hundred.”

“But why?” That was Louie working alone that time.

I hated when they asked me things I really didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t want to lie either, which just made it that much more complicated. “Because… I don’t know. It’s just not. Some people are sensitive about their age.”

Louie’s little shoulders shrugged up against my leg as he pulled me along the lawn… the lawn that needed to have gotten mowed weeks ago. I had to quit putting it off. “But that’s good she’s old,” he explained his reasoning. “She’s lasted longer than all her other friends. She said her Georgie died. She won.”

It never ceased to amaze me how much they both really absorbed. And it scared me. And reminded me why I had to watch everything I said around them. “Outliving your friends isn’t a competition, you little turds,” I said to them as we walked up the steps toward the front door.

“It’s not?”

Why did they sound so surprised? “No. It’s sad. I mean, it’s good she’s lived for so long, but just….” It was times like these I wished I had Rodrigo around so I could make him deal with answering these kinds of things. What the hell was I supposed to say to them? “Look, it just isn’t nice to say she’s a hundred, or that it’s good all of her friends aren’t around anymore.” Before they could make another comment I had no idea how to respond to, I asked, “Whose turn is it to help me with dinner?”

All the silence needed was crickets in the background.

Mac barked from inside the house like he was volunteering.

I ruffled their hair. “Both of you are going to help? It’s my lucky day.”

It was right then that the loud grumble of a truck warned us of its approach coming down the street. All three of us turned to spot a deep red monster of a Ford pickup making its way closer. I could spy two ladders mounted to a frame around it. In the driver seat was my real, actual neighbor—the hunky one with manners. I raised my palm when he passed by, giving us a view of ladders, equipment, and tools I wasn’t familiar with in the bed of the truck. I was pretty sure he lifted a few fingers in our direction as he pulled into the garage.

What I also noticed in that moment was that red car from the day before was parked on the street in front of my neighbor’s house again. What I also saw was the driver side door opening as we continued making our way toward the house.

Lou went up on his tiptoes, craning his neck toward the house. “Is that the man who was fighting?”

I didn’t lie to him. “No.”

“Who?”

I glanced down at Josh’s tone. “It happened last week. Lou heard someone fighting, and it was the neighbor’s brother,” I had to explain.

The ten-year-old turned his head to pin me with this expression that was beyond his years, like he knew what I was trying to hide. Or maybe he could guess what I had done.

I didn’t need or want him worrying, so I kicked him in the butt, immediately shoving my neighbor’s business aside. “Come on. Let’s get started on dinner before we have to put Mac on the grill.”

“Gross!” Lou gagged.

I swear I loved messing with him. There was something about being young and innocent and gullible that I loved, and to be fair, I used to do the same thing to Josh before he’d gotten old enough to realize I was usually full of shit. The boys had just gone inside the house when my phone started ringing. It was my best friend, Van.

“Diana” was the first thing out of her mouth. “I’m dying,” the too familiar voice on the other end moaned.

I snorted, locking the front door behind me as I held the phone up to my face with my shoulder. “You’re pregnant. You’re not dying.”

“But it feels like I am,” the person who rarely ever complained whined. We’d been best friends our entire lives, and I could only count on one hand the number of times I’d heard her grumble about something that wasn’t her family. I’d had the title of being the whiner in our epic love affair that had survived more shit than I was willing to remember right then.

I held up a finger when Louie tipped his head toward the kitchen as if asking if I was going to get started on dinner or not. “Well, nobody told you to get pregnant with the Hulk’s baby. What did you expect? He’s probably going to come out the size of a toddler.”