The phone rang and sent half the pile sliding to the floor.

The caller ID said Bank.

I stood there for three full rings, just staring at it. Part of me knew. Some quiet, tired part of me had known for weeks that this call was coming, had been holding its breath waiting for it, and now here it was.

I answered.

“Ariel, this is Brenda.” Her voice had that particular careful quality of someone who has made a thousand calls like this one and learned not to let it show too much. She told me her department. She told me the balance past due. Then she said, “I’m afraid I have some difficult news about your mortgage. Foreclosure proceedings are starting as of today.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say goodbye. I just hung up and stood in the middle of my living room with laundry on the floor around my feet and my hand pressed against my belly and said, quietly, to no one but her, “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m trying, I promise.”

She kicked. Hard and deliberate, right under my ribs, like she was answering me.

I needed air. Just one breath that didn’t taste like fear. I pulled on my shoes, grabbed the mail from the counter, and went outside, blinking in the brutal morning light. The heat hit me immediately, but at least it was a different kind of terrible than the one inside.

That’s when I saw Mrs. Higgins.

She had lived next door for as long as I’d been on the street. Eighty-two years old, always neatly put together, hair pinned up even on the hottest days, the kind of woman who made you feel vaguely underdressed just by existing near her.

Most mornings she sat on her porch with a crossword puzzle and a glass of sweet tea and called out a greeting if she saw you pass. She knew everyone’s names. She remembered birthdays. She had told me once that she’d lived in that house for fifty-one years and planned to die there, and she’d said it like a fact, not a sadness.