A young man had started visiting my 83-year-old neighbor almost every day.
At first, I didn’t think much of it.
Then he started staying overnight.
Then he had his own key.
Then my neighbor stopped answering my calls.
And finally, one afternoon, I walked into her house and heard faint knocking coming from the basement.
What I discovered downstairs changed everything I thought I knew about both of them.
I’m thirty years old and live in a quiet neighborhood on the edge of town, the kind of place where people recognize each other’s cars and notice when a porch light has been left on too late.
My next-door neighbor, Dorothy, is eighty-three years old.
She has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
When I was a child, she often helped my mother look after me. She would watch me when my mother had errands to run, make me something to eat, and occasionally tell me stories that seemed much more interesting than anything I learned at school.
As I grew older, I never forgot those small acts of kindness.
So when Dorothy became older and began needing more help around the house, I started returning the favor.
