And every weekday morning, when I left for work, she would be sitting or standing near her porch.
“Good morning, Ariel!” she would call.
“Morning, Marjorie. Don’t tire yourself out with those roses.”
She would raise her watering can and smile.
“I was about to tell you the same thing.”
Those conversations rarely lasted more than a minute, yet they became an important part of my life.
My own mother lived several states away. Marjorie never tried to replace her, but somehow, without either of us realizing it, she filled a small, lonely space inside me.
Sometimes she left a slice of peach pie on my doorstep.
Sometimes I brought her trash bin back from the street, changed a lightbulb she could no longer reach, or replaced the batteries in her smoke detectors.
She always thanked me as if I had rebuilt her entire house.
That was why I immediately noticed when a stranger began visiting her every afternoon.
