On that Tuesday morning, she stepped onto the back deck and called across the hedge.
“Morning, Trent.”
Trent stopped striking the heavy bag. He was breathing hard, proud of the visible effort. His face carried the impatient expression he wore whenever someone spoke to him without first acknowledging that he was training.
“What?”
“It’s early. My little girl is still sleeping. Would you mind keeping the bag quiet for another hour?”
Trent looked at his watch, then at Naomi’s coffee cup. “You know this is my house, right?”
“I know you live there.”
“And I can work out on my own property.”
“I’m not disputing that. I’m asking for some consideration.”
Trent laughed. “Maybe if you got up and trained instead of sitting around drinking coffee, you wouldn’t be so soft.”
Naomi studied her for a moment. Beneath the anger and the practiced sneer was a boy trying very hard to look like a man. It would have been easy to answer in the same language. Naomi had been surrounded by the loud confidence of young men before, and she knew what happened when nobody taught them when to stop. But she also knew how quickly a public argument could become the most important thing in a foolish person’s day.
“An hour,” Naomi repeated. “That’s all I’m asking.”
“I’m testing for my black belt next week,” Trent said. “My coach says discipline means training when everyone else sleeps.”
“Discipline also means knowing when someone else needs sleep.”
Trent leaned forward. “You giving me lessons now?”
“No. I’m going inside.”
Naomi slid the door shut behind her. The heavy bag began to swing again almost immediately, each impact deliberately louder than the last.
Naomi stood in the kitchen and considered whether to knock on Richard Harrington’s front door. He could speak to a parent about a child, but Trent was nineteen, old enough to vote and old enough to choose his behavior. He could submit a noise complaint. The thought was unpleasant, not because it frightened him, but because he had bought this house to escape the feeling that every small problem required a chain of command.
Instead Naomi made the pancakes.
Khloe came downstairs at six-thirty with her hair tangled and her rabbit under one arm. She sat at the kitchen island and watched the first pancake turn dark around the edges.
“You talked to him?”
“I did.”
“Did he say sorry?”
“Not exactly.”
She thought about that. “Then he should practice being nicer before he practices kicking.”
Naomi placed a pancake on her plate and smiled. “That’s an excellent training plan.”
At eight, she walked her to the bus stop. The other parents stood in little circles discussing vacations, sports camps, and a school fundraiser. Naomi listened to Mary describe a rabbit that had eaten her newly planted basil. Khloe ran toward her friend Maya, who had saved her a seat. When the bus rolled away, she pressed her palm to the window until Naomi raised her hand in reply.
She watched the vehicle turn the corner before starting home. Behind her, Trent’s car roared out of the Harrington driveway, a new black BMW that Richard had purchased after his son’s last tournament. The exhaust echoed between the houses.
Naomi took the long route past the pond. She wanted ten minutes of walking in a neighborhood she had paid so much to make peaceful. Yet she noticed, with a growing unease she could not quite dismiss, that tranquility built out of expensive houses was not the same thing as kindness.
Chapter 3: The Promise in the Hospital Room
Three years before the trouble with the Harringtons, Naomi spent a winter evening in a hospital room with a paper cup of coffee cooling between her hands. She had been awake for nearly twenty hours. Outside the window, the city glowed through light snowfall, every streetlamp surrounded by a small halo of white. Inside, the radiator clicked and the monitoring equipment made the gentle, indifferent sounds of machines doing their work.
Daniel lay propped against pillows, thinner than he had been a month before, his hair tucked beneath a soft blue scarf. He had spent the afternoon listening to Khloe describe a school project and laughing at a joke that wasn’t particularly funny. After their daughter left with Daniel’s sister, the room seemed to lose half its air.
Naomi stood beside the bed arranging the water glass and straightening the blanket. She had already adjusted both twice. Daniel watched her for a moment.
“You’re doing the thing,” he said.
She stopped. “What thing?”
“Trying to repair the room.”
