“You want her house. Or maybe you want something completely different from Susan.”
Tom was shouting so loudly on my front porch that doors across the street began opening one after another.
His sister, Lisa, stood beside him with her arms crossed.
“The whole neighborhood is talking about you two, Jake,” she said. “A 31-year-old single man takes a 76-year-old woman into his home, goes into her bedroom every night, and closes the door. What exactly do you expect people to think?”
I said nothing.
The truth was, I had already heard the rumors.
At first, the neighbors thought I was simply helping Susan.
Then someone suggested that she was planning to leave me her house.
Someone else said I might have gained access to her bank accounts.
But the ugliest rumors began when people noticed that every evening at exactly 9 PM, I entered Susan’s bedroom and kept the door closed for nearly an hour.
Soon, people were whispering that Susan and I were having some kind of “romance.”
