I knew because I lived directly across the street.
My name is Sam. I’m thirty-one, single, and I work from home. Until a few weeks earlier, my life had been almost painfully quiet.
Then Susan became seriously ill.
She was seventy-six, weak, frightened, and nearly alone.
Now she was staying in my house.
Greg pointed toward the hallway.
“You had no right to move her here without contacting us.”
“I didn’t know how to reach any of you.”
“You should’ve tried harder.”
His wife, Marcy, stood beside him with her arms folded.
“Stop arguing, Greg. We should call the police and let them handle this.”
I stared at the two of them.
Neither had been there when Susan woke at two in the morning struggling to catch her breath.
Neither had wiped soup from her clothes after her hands became too weak to hold the bowl.
Neither had waited outside the bathroom because she was ashamed to admit she could no longer stand safely by herself.
