Our closest neighbors were liars. “Don’t talk to them. Don’t play with John and Connie”, mom said. The family on the corner had all girls. I liked to hang out there and watch the mother put intricate braids in her daughters’ hair. One time I found a tick burrowing in the oldest girls’ foot. The mother screamed and threw a balled-up pair of socks. She was folding laundry.
The quiet man down the road- the one with no wife and two kids, got in his car one day, started the engine but never left the garage. Not alive anyway.
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