I’m thirty-six, a single dad raising my twelve-year-old son, Nick, on my own. His mom died three years ago, and since then it’s just been the two of us in a cramped ninth-floor apartment with noisy pipes, a temperamental elevator, and a hallway that always smells faintly like burnt toast. The place feels loud during the day and painfully quiet at night, but we’ve made it work. Next door lives Mrs. Lawrence. She’s in her seventies, white-haired, sharp as a tack, and bound to a wheelchair after a stroke. She used to teach English and still corrects my grammar without...
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