Chapter 4: Notice

The letters came on a Saturday, and they were the same letter.

Teddy found his in the mailbox at ten past nine, with a coupon for pizza and a flyer about a lost parrot.

He was reading it on the porch in his socks when Magnus's door opened beside him.

Magnus stepped out with the same cream envelope in his hand and the same expression on his face.

They looked at each other.

"You first," said Teddy.

"Dear Tenants," read Magnus, in the voice of a man reading a lab result.

"After forty-one years of owning this duplex, I have decided to sell."

"I can't believe she did it in a form letter."

"It is not a form letter. It has a personal postscript."

"What does yours say?"

"'Please keep watering the pear tree.'"

"Mine says, 'Please keep the cat out of the garden.'"

Magnus winced.

"Read the rest," Teddy said.

He read the rest.

Winifred Bellweather was seventy-one, and she had taught high school botany for thirty-five years.

She was selling the building to a company called Spindler Property Group.

The buyer would keep one unit as a rental.

The other would become a sales office for the condo tower he was building on the next block.

Closing was in January.

Tenant applications were due December first.

Mr. Spindler would choose.

Whoever he did not choose had until the end of February to go.

Teddy sat down hard on the porch step, and the wet came straight through his pajama pants.

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