She put the kettle on and watched from behind the kitchen curtain. There were two of them, she now saw—the woman in the hat and a second girl in dungarees who was doing something to a ring light that seemed to require the concentration of a surgeon. They had propped a bicycle against Edna’s garden wall. It was far too clean to have ever been ridden anywhere.
Edna drank her tea. She wasn’t angry, exactly. She was curious in the way she got curious when something didn’t quite make sense—steady and patient, like a cat watching the end of a string for the first time. After ten minutes, the two young women packed their equipment into matching canvas totes and left without so much as a glance at the house. No knock. No thank you. No acknowledgment.
She mentioned it to her grandson Jamie that evening. He was twenty-four, worked in digital marketing, and had the particular expression of a person who already knew exactly what she was about to describe. He showed her the photograph on his phone. Edna looked at it for a long moment. Her door looked lovely.