Chapter 7: Distance text
Distance required practice, not a single declaration.
I removed Eleanor and Chloe from the building’s visitor list. The doorman received a printed note and a copy of the relevant civil language Helen provided. Packages addressed to them were refused. Flowers that arrived with Eleanor’s name on the card were donated to the hospital wing that had taken Maya at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Symbolism was not my hobby. Consistency was.
Relatives called. Some wanted to mediate. Some wanted gossip. A few wanted to say they had always worried. I gave Helen’s office number to the mediators and the gossips. To the ones who had always worried, I said thank you and did not invite them over until Maya asked for company by name. She asked for her own sister from Queens, for a college friend who brought lasagna and did not mention Miami, for the neighbor across the hall who had knocked on New Year’s Day with spare formula when she saw the ambulance. Those people entered. Others remained concepts.
May you like
Maya’s first outing alone was a slow walk to the pharmacy two blocks away. I waited with Liam at the window like a man watching a ship clear a harbor. She returned with vitamins and a color in her cheeks that did not come from fever. “No one followed me,” she said, half joking. I did not joke about follow-through. I locked the door behind her and kissed the top of her head.
At night the security app still sent motion alerts for the hallway. Most were neighbors. Once, in February, a figure that matched Eleanor’s posture stood too long near our door and left without knocking. I saved the clip, sent it to Helen, and did not confront anyone in the corridor. The civil order and the building notice did the speaking. Eleanor’s lawyer advised her, we later learned, to stop testing the radius. The alerts quieted.
