Our first evening there, Zoe and I ate takeout pizza on the living room floor because the dining table was still in the truck. We opened every window to let the paint smell escape. She looked around at the boxes, the bare walls, and the lone ceiling fan turning above us. Then she smiled, really smiled, and said, "We can stay here, right?"
"That's the idea," I told her.
"Like, all through high school?"
"Unless you suddenly become an international celebrity and buy yourself a castle."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm serious, Dad."
I set down my pizza. "So am I. This is our home."
She leaned her head against my shoulder for a moment. At sixteen, she wasn't inclined to do that very often. I sat absolutely still, afraid that if I moved she'd remember she was a teenager and change her mind. Outside, the neighborhood was quiet. Somewhere farther down the street, a dog barked once. I remember thinking that perhaps we'd finally reached the uncomplicated part of our lives.
The first two weeks supported that hope. A retired woman named Dolores Alvarez brought a container of chicken soup because she had noticed our moving truck and decided people carrying boxes in August shouldn't have to cook. She lived across the street in a white house with a porch swing, a row of clay pots, and roses she had planted herself. Her husband had died years earlier, but she had enough family photographs in her living room to wallpaper the neighborhood. She called me mijo from the moment we met and immediately informed Zoe that she was welcome to use her porch if she ever needed a quiet place to study.
A man named Bernard Bell, who lived around the corner, offered to show me where the shutoff valve for the community irrigation system was located because the original site map had several errors. He was a retired postal employee with a narrow frame, thick glasses, and an almost supernatural affection for spreadsheets. At first I assumed he was simply a man who liked being useful. Later, when we needed to reconstruct years of association activity, Bernard would turn out to be one of the most valuable people I had ever met.
We bought curtains. I replaced a handful of worn outlets, hired the appropriate help where a permit or inspection was required, and installed a new ceiling fan in Zoe's room. We painted her walls a pale green that she chose after rejecting seventeen other colors. I repaired a loose board on the deck. On our third weekend, we drove to a garden store for mulch, a few shrubs, and one ridiculous ceramic garden gnome with a red pointed hat and an enormous smile.
Zoe found it on a clearance shelf. She held it up beside her face. "He looks like you after three cups of coffee."
"I look much younger than that."
"He has your eyebrows."
I bought the gnome. We named him Gerald and set him beside the front walkway, where he looked mildly surprised by the world. Zoe photographed him with her phone and sent the picture to Elena. That evening, her mother called, and I heard Zoe laughing in her bedroom. I took it as a sign that the adults might eventually manage to stop making their daughter's life so difficult.