Before I left, Eli walked me to the small parking lot behind the building.
He hesitated beside my car and looked toward the streetlights.
“I still check the windows some nights,” he said.
I asked whether he wanted to talk about what frightened him.
He said the feeling sometimes arrived without a specific thought attached to it.
He was working on that with a counselor and had begun practicing routines that helped him recognize when he was safe.
I told him I was glad he had someone qualified to help.
He nodded and then changed the subject to my new garden bed.
I described the basil plants and complained that rabbits had already found the parsley.
He promised to bring a small mesh cover he could make from leftover materials at work.
When I drove away, I saw him walking back to the building with his hands in his pockets.
He entered through the front door without looking over his shoulder.
The following weekend, I found a small parcel on my porch.
Inside was the mesh cover, neatly folded, along with a handwritten note.
The note said that the cover should keep most rabbits out if I remembered to close the side clips.
Eli had added a drawing showing how the clips fitted around the wooden border.
At the bottom, he wrote that he would stop by for dinner on Sunday if I was free.
I read the note twice and laughed at how closely his instructions resembled Dad’s.
Then I carried the cover into the garden and fitted it over the parsley.
For so long, every object arriving at my house had seemed to demand suspicion.
I used to examine packages, check the cameras, and wonder who wanted me to find something frightening.
This parcel asked nothing from me except to protect a few small plants.
I left it in place and went inside to answer Eli’s message.
On Sunday, he arrived carrying a bag of groceries and a bottle of lemonade.
He brought the repair manual from his apartment because he wanted to show me a note Dad had written on a page we both overlooked.
We stood at the kitchen counter reading our father’s impatient instructions about replacing a faulty switch.
Then Eli closed the book and put it back in his bag.
“I thought you’d like that,” he said.
“I do,” I answered.
We made dinner together while the evening light moved across the floor.
Afterward, we washed the dishes and argued about whether the old porch light should be replaced with a more efficient fixture.
Eli said the new lights were brighter and cheaper to operate.
I told him this particular light had become part of the house.
He agreed that we could keep it for now, provided he could replace the worn wiring safely.
We set a date for the repair instead of turning the disagreement into a family legend.
Then we went outside and sat on the steps until the first stars appeared.
We had lost years that nobody could return.
We also had an evening that belonged entirely to us.
