My Neighbor Parked In My Driveway For Six Months Until 30 Cars Blocked Hers

on my front lawn, in her slippers, and then she stormed back into her house to change out of her robe while she waited for them to arrive, muttering the whole way.

Meanwhile, breakfast went on.

I walked back into my own backyard, and for the first time in two years, it sounded like one of

Robert’s mornings. People laughing in little clusters. Car doors thumping shut. Somebody in a heated but entirely friendly argument about the correct firing order of a V8 engine. The clink of

forks on paper plates, the hiss of the griddle, the low music of a couple dozen people who genuinely liked each other and had all shown up in the same place.

George was hunched over a portable propane griddle on my patio, attempting to fry a dozen eggs at once while three different men stood around him offering loud, contradictory, completely unsolicited advice.

“You’ve got the heat up too high, George, you’re gonna ruin ’em!”

“Leave him be, the heat’s fine, it’s his flipping that’s all wrong.”

“Nobody asked either one of you two!”

I laughed. I really laughed, from somewhere down deep in my chest that hadn’t opened up in two years, and the sound of it caught me completely by surprise, the way you’re startled by a sneeze.

I honestly couldn’t remember the last time laughter had come out of me like that, unguarded and involuntary and real.

George glanced up from his eggs, spatula in hand. “There she is.”

“There who is?” I said.

“That laugh.” He pointed the spatula at me across the patio. “That right there. We’ve missed that, Carol. All of us have. More than you know.”

And I understood exactly what he meant, and my eyes filled before I could stop them.

One of the club members, a woman named Diane who Robert had always spoken of warmly, a

widow herself for many years, came over and pressed a warm paper cup into my hands.

“Robert’s coffee,” she said simply.

I looked down into it. Black, with exactly one sugar.

“He would have complained,” I said, and my voice wobbled, “that you put the sugar in before you handed it to him. He was very particular about that. He liked to stir it in himself, said it never

dissolved right otherwise.”

“I know he would have,” Diane said, smiling, her own eyes bright. “That’s precisely why I did it that way. Somebody ought to give him something to complain about, even now.”

My throat closed up entirely.

Then Diane reached into the canvas bag slung over her shoulder. “I brought something along to

show you. I’ve been meaning to for the longest time, honestly, but I could never quite find the right moment. I think this is it.”

She handed me a photograph. A real printed one, glossy, a little faded and soft at the corners from being handled. It had been taken right here in this driveway, maybe eight years earlier.

Robert stood beside his old Pontiac with both hands thrown up in the air and his mouth wide open, clearly caught mid-sentence in the act of directing traffic, bossing the entire club into their

proper places. Cars filled every inch of the frame behind him. The early light was pure gold, the way it only ever is right after sunrise. He looked so alive, so utterly and completely and

unmistakably himself, that for a moment I genuinely forgot to breathe. I could hear his voice coming out of that open mouth. I could hear exactly what he was yelling.

I touched the little white border of the photo with the tip of one finger, gently, as if it might bruise. “I’d forgotten this one even existed.”

“We haven’t,” Diane said softly. “None of us have forgotten a thing, Carol. That’s rather the point of all this.”