Page 6

“Yes.” She stretched her arms from side to side. “This is my property line. You’re violating the law by having your decorations straddle this line.”

Bradley looked back and forth between her wide arms, which appeared perfectly aligned with the fence that separated their backyards. “Okay. I suppose I could move them over a couple—”

“No! You can’t just move them. You have to take them down.”

Bradley’s brow creased. “Take them down? But the Christmas season is only just beginning!”

The woman brought a finger to her lips and looked around frantically.

“This is a festive-free zone,” she went on, her pitch disconcertingly high. “It has been for over five years. You can’t just move in here and—”

“Uh-uh, nope,” Lana cut her off, approaching with a wagging finger. “I don’t think so. We have been at this all day, my arms are Jell-O, and we are not taking down these decorations for some uptight representative of the homeowners’ association.”

“Yeah,” Sara joined in, thrusting her thumb at her sister. “What she said.”

To Bradley’s surprise, the woman took a few steps back from his sisters. He almost laughed. Sure, the two of them were in their mother-bear postures, puffing their chests and widening their stances, as they often had to in order to get someone to acknowledge all four foot nine of them, but they were still a foot shorter than the woman, with soft, high-pitched voices that couldn’t be made to sound intimidating no matter how hard they might try. So he almost laughed.

Something in the woman’s expression stopped him. The depth of her fear, that same underlying sadness that had drawn him to her the first time. He still felt the tug now, the desire to make her smile.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot.” Bradley stepped in front of his sisters. “I’m Bradley, your new neighbour. I work at the hardware store, as you know. During the regular season, I work in lumber because I know my way around a good piece of wood. Okay, that didn’t come out right. I just mean I know the difference between a bevel and a mitre cut and when you’d choose a softwood pine over a hardwood oak. But I love working the Christmas tent in the winter because I enjoy cleaning and organizing and decorating and basically anything that keeps my hands occupied, because, well, without getting all TMI on you, I like to keep busy to stay out of trouble, but that’s a problem well on its way to being reined in for good, I assure you. In fact, it’s a Bradley promise. I’ll be a model neighbour.”

Lana and Sara slapped their palms to their faces in unison, forever embarrassed by his habit of spewing verbal diarrhea whenever he was nervous. And this woman definitely made him nervous.

His body prickled with a fresh sheen of sweat, his early withdrawal symptoms continuing to resurface at random and often inopportune times.

“And you are?” he asked hopefully.

The woman glanced between him and his sisters. “Just take the decorations down.”

Bradley’s hackles rose. He was being extremely reasonable. And while he tended toward easygoing, he was not a complete pushover. It was one of the topics he discussed frequently with his therapist. Ensuring his needs were being conveyed and met. Moving into this house was a big step toward regaining his independence. And here this woman was, trying to take away a simple, inoffensive comfort he and his sisters had worked hard to set up, because of some petty property line dispute?

“This is against the law?” he said. “Straddling the boundary like this?”

“Pshh, maybe some boring local bylaw,” Lana added.

“Then we’d better sort this out immediately.” Bradley went into the house, retrieved a measuring tape, then fully extended it between their front lawns, from the edge of the sidewalk to the exact middle of their adjoining backyard fence.

“Let’s get to it, girls,” he said. “Keep all decorations on this side of the tape.”

His neighbour stood there as they worked, a wide-eyed statue. By the time he clapped his hands together to celebrate a task well done, ignoring the strain in his muscles that came after hours of manual labour—never mind the hours of restless mental agitation alongside the mad dashes he’d had to make to rescue his sisters from being toppled over by large boxes or crushed beneath faux leather—the woman was practically vibrating.

“But this…this is my home.” She gasped the words.

“It is. And you can stay on your side. And I’ll stay on mine.”

At that, she whirled around and ran back into her house. Bradley heard the click of her lock, followed by the click of at least two more.

His sisters high-fived victoriously.

Bradley, on the other hand, didn’t feel particularly triumphant. Hadn’t he wanted to make amends with this woman? Instead, he’d only escalated the situation.

An ache swelled, similar to the one he experienced whenever he thought of his father.

“Cheer up, little bro.” Lana reached up to place a hand on his upper arm. “That woman was being completely unreasonable. You handled yourself as well as could be expected.”

“Maybe.” But when he thought about those extra two clicks as she locked her door, how she’d taken two steps back as his sisters approached, the breaking of her features when she told him this was her home, the word holding layers beyond the usual one to two storeys, he questioned whether that was true.

“Come on, let’s head inside.” Sara looked to her sister, and they had some sort of telepathic conversation. “We have something for you.”