The door across the street always stuck eight centimeters from the frame.
Clara Maret knew because she had watched it all summer from her kitchen whenever she looked up over the sink. Nora pulled once without success, drew the handle toward herself, then gave it a sharp bump with her hip. The door yielded with a dull sound. By the third week, Clara had stopped flinching. By the sixth, she was mentally diagnosing the cause: swollen wood, a lower hinge, a sagging threshold. A house never did anything “for no reason.” You just had to watch long enough.
That Monday, Nora did not have her hands free for the hip bump. She held a crate of bottles against her stomach, a grocery bag cut into her wrist, and a paper roll stuck out of her tote. The door bounced back; the crate slipped.
Clara crossed the street before deciding to.
“Wait.”
She caught the crate from underneath. Nora gave a brief laugh, more surprised than grateful.
“I had a plan.”
“It was going to end up on your shoes.”
“That was phase two.”
Rue des Ormes, south of Angers, was not wide enough to ignore one another gracefully. Twelve houses built in the late seventies, six on either side, garages transformed by successive owners, hedges that gave trimming disputes municipal importance. Clara had lived at number 11 for nine years. Nora had bought number 12, directly opposite, eighteen months earlier.
The two houses had been drawn from the same plan, reversed like a sewing pattern. In Clara’s, the stairs rose to the left of the entrance; in Nora’s, they should have risen on the right. The living room should have opened behind them. The kitchen at the back.
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