I went inside and made the boys’ sandwiches and put the kettle on and felt, not triumphant exactly, but settled. The way you feel when a system works the way it was designed to work.
That evening, Paul knocked on our door.
I had seen Paul in passing plenty of times. He was a quiet, slightly tired-looking man who mowed his lawn on Saturday mornings and nodded when you saw him in the road and gave the impression of someone who had made a long peace with living adjacent to a personality larger than his own.
Ezoic
He looked mortified.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
“For what? You’re not the one parking there.”
“I knew,” he said. “Not the full extent. But I knew she was parking across your driveway and I knew you’d asked her to stop.”
I looked at him.
“And you didn’t say anything.”
