Chapter 6: The Porch Light

"Kendra," I said again. "What are you looking at?"

She turned slowly, and her face in the streetlight was soft and sleepy.

"The street," she said. "It's so quiet here. I'm sorry, honey. I walk when I can't sleep."

"You can walk in the guest room," I said.

"Of course." She touched my doorframe as she passed. "I'm such a bother."

I listened to her door close down the hall.

Then I got up, shut the curtains and sat on the edge of the bed until it was light.

By Thursday evening I had slept maybe nine hours in four days.

I came home from school to a dark porch.

The bulb above the front door had burned out, and the replacement battery I'd been handed was for the lock, not the light.

I dragged a kitchen chair out onto the porch, climbed up and reached for the fixture.

It was too high by a few inches.

"That's going to end badly," said a voice from the walkway.

Gabe stood at the bottom of my steps with a six-foot ladder over one shoulder.

"I heard the chair," he said. "It has a very distinctive creak."

"I'm fine," I said.

"You're standing on a kitchen chair with a bad leg."

I looked down. He was right about the leg.

He set up the ladder against the porch post and tested it with one boot.

"Hold the rail," he said. "I'll hand you the bulb."

I climbed up two rungs and he steadied the ladder from below.

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