CHAPTER TWO — AN ORDINARY STREET

Cedar Row had been built around a factory that closed before Daniel was born.
The homes were narrow, the front gardens uneven, and the sidewalks repaired in patches by three different administrations.
People had spent decades keeping the houses alive without expecting anybody important to notice.
Carol had lived at number twenty-six since her first marriage.
She had survived a husband’s illness, a daughter’s departure, and the slow disappearance of neighbors who once borrowed sugar from one another without knocking.
She regarded the street as a place that belonged to its residents collectively.
Daniel had moved into number twenty-eight three days earlier.
He had chosen the house partly because he could walk to a neighborhood bakery without a guard standing between him and the customers.


He had also chosen it because the district residence felt like a government office with beds.
His appointment as governor of the Lake Arden Federal District had followed the creation of a temporary federally administered region comprising several formerly separate municipal services.
The title sounded grander than his actual authority.
He oversaw district agencies and could direct administrative reviews, but he could not erase local laws, decide criminal cases, or dismiss an employee without process.
He could not restore a neighbor’s dignity by signing an order.
He had already learned that lesson in another city.
His press staff had kept his address private because of threats directed at public officials.
Carol knew none of this when he arrived.
She saw the car first and decided that its owner represented everything that frightened her about the street’s future.


The day before the attack, she had confronted him beside the front steps.
“We do not need rich people turning this into a place we cannot afford,” she had said.
Daniel had explained that he intended to live there, not redevelop it.
Carol had called him a liar.
Now a uniformed district officer photographed the damaged car while another took Carol’s name.
Daniel asked that the officer handle the incident exactly as he would for any other resident.
The officer looked relieved to receive a sensible instruction.
Carol sat on her porch with both hands folded around an empty mug.
Her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Ortez, approached her through the connecting garden gate.
“Carol, what have you done?”
“I thought he was buying the block.”
“With a car?”
Carol did not answer.
Mrs. Ortez was a retired school secretary who had seen plenty of bad decisions disguised as community protection.
“Did somebody tell you he was buying the block?” she asked.
“People were talking.”
“Which people?”
Carol glanced toward the far end of Cedar Row.
A blue sedan had been parked there on three mornings that week.
Its driver had visited Carol twice.
She turned her mug between her palms.
“I need to make a telephone call,” she said.