Katherine was the kind of woman who found something wrong with everything.
Last Christmas, she had marched over to complain about my porch.
“Those gnome decorations are tacky,” she had told me flatly. “They lower the tone of the entire street.”
She was standing at her window, watching.
I had only smiled and thanked her for the feedback.
Then, just last month, it was my roses.
“You planted them on the wrong side,” she insisted, pointing at my flowerbed. “Roses belong on the left, not the right. Everyone knows that.”
“They seem happy where they are,” I had replied gently.
“Happy is not the point,” she snapped. “Order is the point.”
“You planted them on the wrong side,”
I never argued.
Since losing my husband, I had learned that keeping the peace cost less.
So I smoothed things over.
I told myself it was easier that way, for me and for the children.
