The window above the sink faced the neighbour 's back yard . As Susan washed the dishes , a man she hadn 't seen before stepped out the screen door into the yard . He was tall , with longish hair and a beard . He stood with a mug in his hand , looking at the garden patch . A woman came out of the house and joined him . Her hair was long and straight , parted in the middle , and she wore a loose shirt and wide - legged pants . The man said something to her and pointed at the patch of earth ; she nodded . That night , after feeding the baby and rocking her back to sleep , Susan went to the kitchen window and checked the neighbour 's yard . The outside light was on , and she could see the garden soil freshly turned , and bedding plants waiting in flats on a bench by the back door . She stood for a moment , trying to imagine life inside that door . The man would leave for work in the morning , driving the flappy - sided pickup . Sometime later the girl would play in the yard while the woman drank from a mug and looked at the garden . Probably not coffee , they seemed too healthy and alternative for that . Herb tea or mate ' , something bitter and exotic . Elise rumbled in her crib , and Susan turned back to the bedroom . Susan pushed the stroller round to the back door . Elise had fallen asleep and she wanted to haul the stroller into the laundry room at the back , where she could leave her to sleep . As she felt for the keys in her pocket she glanced over across the low fence . The neighbour woman was squatting in the garden , long hair falling forward as she reached to set bedding plants in the soil . Susan opened the door and fussed with the baby 's blanket a bit as she watched . The truck was gone and the little girl probably at kindergarten , and the woman had some time to herself and her garden before the family came home . Susan bumped the stroller into the narrow passage and went on into the kitchen . Standing back from the window , she watched the woman work . Their own garden had been a tangled jungle of raspberry canes , weeds , and volunteer tomatoes when they moved in . Susan 's husband had turned the soil with a rototiller borrowed from his father . " If you plant the rows wide enough I can weed with the tiller , " he suggested . She imagined the spinning tines close to the delicate corn and tomato plants and shook her head . " It gives me a reason to be out there . I 'll just pull them by hand or use the hoe . " Working in the garden , while Elise slept in the stroller , gave Susan an excuse to talk to the new neighbour . Her name was Jan . The man was not her husband and not the girl 's father . They had met at a music festival last summer and he had come to live with Jan and her daughter at her mother 's place in Vancouver . " Mom was getting pretty fed up with it . All these people under her feet , she said . I mean , the people were her daughter and granddaughter , but I guess we were making her life too busy . I don 't know . So I signed up for the horticulture diploma at the college here . I love working with plants ; they 're so straightforward . Jed got a job in a kitchen . Mom said she 'd keep Maia for me , but I said I didn 't want to cramp her style . Jed 's a good father figure to Maia , anyway ; they 've really bonded . " Susan was a reluctant driver . She didn 't like how this made her dependant on Jack to ferry her around , as they lived a fifteen minute drive from town . She tried taking the infrequent bus , struggling to take Elise out of the stroller and hold her while trying to fold the stroller with the other hand , then lugging baby and stroller up the steps , dropping the stroller , and going back for the diaper bag on the sidewalk . The driver and other passengers watched disinterestedly , and she felt pressure to hurry and not hold everyone up . When she told Jack about it , he suggested that they do groceries together at the weekend . " It 'll be faster and easier , " he said . Susan felt like crying . She was so busy trying to be stoic and efficient ; she didn 't always admit to herself just how overwhelming the transition to motherhood was . " I don 't know how my Mom did all this and made it look so easy , " she said . She was sitting at the kitchen table with the baby on her shoulder . Jack cleared the dinner plates and ran water into the sink . " Mine too . But by the time we were noticing our mothers , they 'd been doing it for years and we weren 't babies any more . I bet your mom sat up in the middle of the night crying while she fed you . " This was a reference to the previous night , when Susan had been sobbing so hard while the baby suckled that Jack woke up . " What makes you think I don 't like that ? She 's my baby too . And anyway my workday ends at five but yours is twenty four hours . I can help you out . Those guys do stuff together , " he added , nodding at the neighbour 's yard out the window . " It 's a lot easier once your kid is older , like theirs . " Susan didn 't want Jan to know how much she watched her , didn 't want her to think she was weird . Although maybe she was . Maybe she was going a little crazy , at home all day with the baby . She wasn 't sure exactly what the point of her life was , who she was anymore . Elise 's mother , that much was obvious ; the milk that filled her breasts and leaked from her nipples when the baby cried told her that , as well as the nights she spent alternately feeding and walking , or lying staring at the dark ceiling imagining the many awful ways a baby can die , and sobbing quietly so that Jack wouldn 't wake up . A friend of Jack 's stopped by one afternoon before he was home , and Susan invited him to come in and wait . She brought coffee for him , mug in one hand and baby on the other shoulder , then sat with him in the living room , conscious of her unbrushed hair and the lilac fleece bathrobe an aunt had given her . She patted Elise 's back and tried to remember how to make conversation . The friend stretched out his legs and looked at his work boots , which she had told him not to bother taking off ; the carpet hadn 't been vacuumed since the baby was born anyway . " So , " he said , smiling at her then down at the coffee mug . " What does Susan do all day ? " Susan looked down at her bathrobe . Elise had been fussy today and she hadn 't been able to put her down long enough to dress . She didn 't like to shower unless Jack was there , worried something would happen while the water blocked off sound . Once , she had tried sitting Elise in her car seat on the bathroom floor , but she had cried the whole time and milk poured from Susan 's breasts in the warm water . " Well , I take care of the house too , " said Susan , looking at the unvacuumed floor and thinking of the pile of dishes in the sink . She had rinsed the mug he was using under the tap with one hand before pouring his coffee . " With the baby , there 's not a lot of time for anything else . " Jack came in then and rescued her from more questioning . Why do I have to justify my time ? she thought later . Isn 't caring for a new life enough ? But she knew it wasn 't , not for her . Susan and Jack had met the summer before while they were both travelling in California . They spent the summer together in his van , travelling from beach to beach and sometimes to the mountains . They married in the fall in her parents ' back yard in Oregon . Susan was already two months pregnant , and had informed the head of her university department that she would not be returning to her studies . The Head of the Department of Languages was a small man with balding hair and a beard , and bright brown eyes . He steepled his fingers and leaned forward on his desk . " You were presented with the top prize in German last year ; the German Institute of Oregon gave you an inscribed thesaurus . " " Yes , " she said , eyes on her hands in her lap . " I think you 're making a mistake . " Susan left without responding . It was October when she came to Canada , newly married and pregnant , to the mid - sized city in southern BC where Jack had grown up . They drove across the border in Jack 's van , a few boxes of her clothes and books in the back . Her mother had said not to bother clearing out her old room at home , as if she expected her back soon enough . She would pack up the rest of her things and bring them when the baby was born , she said , and Susan wondered if she was waiting to see if it was worth the trouble , if Susan would be home before then . " I remember the old couple who built this house , " Jack said . " I used to visit with Mom . An old Italian couple , I think . They had a huge garden , and Mom used to come over and can produce with the wife . " Jack 's mother had died of lung cancer a year and a half ago , while he was away finishing his journalism degree . The move back was because he was worried about his dad , alone and " almost helpless , " he said . " I had to show him how to do laundry . Load it up to here , measure the detergent ; he 's beyond helpless in the house . " Bill tried to take an interest in his son 's life . The boy had a family now , for goodness sake . A young wife and a little daughter . He had married very quickly , and those types of marriages didn 't always last , but the girl seemed nice enough . A bit dazed by the speed of it all , the new town , being a mother so young . Frances had never been bewildered like that . Never still in her bathrobe at dinnertime . She had waited so long to be a mother , and had embraced it fully when it finally came . Bill was twenty four and Fran twenty when they married , and they had expected to be parents soon . When Fran still wasn 't pregnant two years later , she had gone back to work part time at the community newspaper , where she wrote a weekly article for the women 's page . It was a household column , with recipes , tips on house cleaning , organizing a dinner party , handmade gifts , and so on . Fran enjoyed her work , but was always home before Bill so that smells of dinner cooking met him as he came in . On days she wasn 't at the newspaper office she often experimented at home , testing new cleaners or making picture frames from coloured cardboard . Fran was always singing . " I like to hear people sing while they work , " she would say , and she sang while she starched and folded napkins for an article on setting a festive table , or tested a recipe a reader had sent in . She was always ready with a laugh , always saw the bright side ; she could look out on a cloudy , rainy March sky and find the one tiny patch of blue . " I think it 's clearing , " she 'd say . She was almost thirty and Bill already in his thirties when she became pregnant . Bill had settled into a comfortable life without children , but Fran was ecstatic . She resigned from the newspaper and threw herself into preparing for motherhood . Here was the project she had been practising for all these years , the real one finally . Jack could , perhaps , have been a spoiled , overprotected child , only child of older , doting parents ; but his was a calm , thoughtful nature that responded well to his parents ' attention . As a child , he was content to spend his time working alongside his mother in the well - ordered house , and it was their frequent visits to his mother 's old workplace that formed his decision to become a journalist . As a young teenager Jack was already working for the paper : running errands , folding flyers , researching archives . He planned to seek employment at a large national publication after graduation , maybe even move to the US where there were so many more opportunities . That all changed when Fran became ill , the cancer moving quickly so that she was dead two months after the diagnosis . Father and son were both lost , drifting in their grief , without Fran who was the glue between them . Jack managed to finish his degree , then bought a van and took off travelling . Bill rarely heard from him until he came back with a young , pregnant wife . Bill missed Fran humming in the kitchen ; wherever she was , there had been sound and movement , and now the house was so terribly empty . Midsummer was already past , and the days were shortening and the nights lengthening towards winter , but the heat was just reaching its peak . When the baby woke in the night , and fed and cried , and wouldn 't go back to sleep , Susan took her outside into the summer air like a warm bath and walked her around the yard , rocking her and looking at the hills across the highway . Inside , the house still held the heat of the day , even with all the windows open to the night , but outside it was pleasant to walk in pyjamas and bare feet , the earth still warm underfoot . In summer here in the semi - desert it never really cooled off . Their house sat exposed in the middle of the yard , nothing protecting it from the insisting sun . At night Susan could smell the heat rising from the asphalt roof , could imagine heat waves shimmering off the house seeking somewhere to dissipate in the bleached landscape . Exhausted as Susan was , she still welcomed the chance to go out into the mellow night and feel what slight air movement there was , rustling the hedge of apricot saplings lining the driveway . This was when she loved the sun , which made her life a misery of sweat and irritation during the day : now when it was gone below the horizon , and its heat released from the earth and the house walls felt gentle and unthreatening . Raised voices from the open windows next door drew her head . She stopped walking to listen and the baby whimpered and turned her head on Susan 's shoulder . She felt exposed now , in her pyjamas and bare feet ; the open back door was on the other side of the house . She walked to the door , shoulders hunched , and as she reached it the voices grew louder and the screen door slammed open , and Jan stumbled out backwards followed by Jed , who was shouting and jabbing a finger at her face . Susan hurried in and went to the window . Jan was screaming and punched at Jed with both hands . He stumbled back then grabbed Jan by the shoulders . Jack came up behind her and asked what was going on . " We should call the police , " she said . " I don 't like the look of this . " " Do you think we should interfere ? Everyone argues sometimes . " " This is more than arguing . I could hear them when they were still in the house . He 's grabbing the shovel - oh God , Jack , you have to go out there - what is he - the garden ! He 's smashing the garden ! Jack ! " Jack went out the back door and Susan ran for the phone . " It 's already been called in , " said the dispatcher . " There 's a patrol car on its way right now . " Susan looked out the door . Jack was re - stacking a pile of lumber , letting the planks slap down loudly . Jan was alternately screaming at Jed to stop and crying with her hands to her head . A police car pulled in and two officers emerged . " My arm is bruised where he dragged me around . " Jan pulled up her sleeve to show Susan . " Such a control freak . Everything had to be his way . " Jan shook her head . " I 'm better off without him . I 'm going to take Maia down to my Mom 's for a visit ; we need to get out of here for a bit . " When Jan and Maia left for Vancouver in Jan 's old Subaru with the dreamcatcher hanging from the mirror , Susan felt let down , empty . She washed the breakfast dishes while Elise had her morning nap , and looked out the window at the quiet yard , the screen door that had been left hanging open . That afternoon , after their walk to the mail box and around the block , with Elise sleeping in the stroller next to the chain fence , Susan swung over the fence into Jan 's yard . She stood for a moment looking around , orienting herself to the familiar scene closer up . Details came into focus that couldn 't be seen from the kitchen window : the garden tools leaning against the wall on the far side of the screen door , the pattern of red brick between the door and the garden , the deep grooves in the seat of the wooden bench . The garden was left in the aftermath of Jed 's rage , wilted plants scattered over the soil . The red bucket Jan used to collect weeds sat on the bricks and Susan bent and started pulling tomato vines , broccoli plants and wilted kale and throwing them in the bucket . By the time Elise woke up she had filled and emptied the bucket onto the compost heap four times , and raked the soil smooth . She swung back over the fence and stood looking at her work . She would have liked to have gone into the house and tidied up there too , but she didn 't even try the door to see if it was locked ; she was afraid of her strong desire to walk through Jan 's space , to sit at her table and know what Jan would see when she sat there , look in the fridge , at the food left on the plates by the sink ; lie on her bed , stare at the ceiling and the walls ; fall asleep there and be found like Goldilocks , inhabiting a skin that was not hers . The sun was rising later now , well past the solstice and heading to the fall of the year . Just as suddenly as she had left , Jan was back , and she had brought two men with her . " Her brothers , probably . Or her dad . One of them looks old enough , " Jack said . He was reading the newspaper at the kitchen table . Susan stood back from the sink and watched the two strange men , who were holding cans of beer and looking at the garden . " She 's never mentioned a brother , " she said . " And she told me her dad took off years ago . That 's why her mom 's so crabby . " " Her mom 's probably crabby because her daughter drifts around getting into trouble , " said Jack , not looking up from the paper . " Maybe she replaced Jed already . Two of them in case one is another psycho . " Later , when the men were in the house , Susan spoke to Jan across the fence . " I picked them up right at the top of the Coquihalla , on the way down to Mom 's , " Jan said . " Their ride took off and left them when they stopped at the washrooms by the tollbooth . I couldn 't leave them stranded on a mountain like that . Dave and me talked all the way to Vancouver . It was like we knew each other already ; our connection was so deep , so real . Mom wasn 't into having him and Justin stay , so I left Maia with her and stayed at the boys ' place . We 're just back to get my stuff . I 'm moving in with them . Dave and me are like soul mates ; we both just know this was meant to be . " Jan shrugged . " That 's just outer stuff . The details . What matters is finding your inner bliss and following that where it takes you . Love , you know ? " Susan was eating breakfast by herself . Elise was down for her morning nap , and Jack had left for work , leaving two cups of decaf coffee in the coffee maker . He worried that Susan drank regular coffee when he wasn 't there and that was why Elise woke up crying at night : " the caffeine is probably into your milk by evening and then it 's like you 're feeding her coffee for her bedtime snack " . It was ten am and Susan sat at the small table in her bathrobe , eating a bowl of cereal . There was a knock at the back door . Startled , Susan looked out the back window and saw Jan standing on the porch . " We 're heading back to the coast today , " she said . " I just wanted to say goodbye . There 's some plants in the house you might want to have . I 'm leaving the door unlocked ; you should go in and get them . I haven 't told the landlord I 'm leaving , so do it soon before he realizes I 'm gone and cleans the place out . " " And thanks for cleaning up the garden , by the way . It was you , wasn 't it ? I didn 't want to touch it ; it was like Jed 's anger was still hanging there . " Susan closed the door and poured the warm decaf down the sink , put on a fresh batch of regular coffee . She stood and looked out the window while it made . Jack carried Elise . The door was unlocked as Jan had said . The house was partially cleared ; there was a table in the kitchen , but no chairs . A coffee table and bookcase were left in the living room and a picture of a coastal scene on the wall . The marks of the bed legs on the bedroom carpet were all that was left there . The plants were sitting on the kitchen counter . " Do you want them all ? " Jack called . Susan came back to the kitchen . " We don 't really need any plants . I 'm killing the ones we have already . " She looked around , imagining Jan at the counter making dinner , chopping vegetables from the garden for soup while Jed helped Maia read a book at the table . " Look , she left her gardening tools , " Jack said , pointing at a crate by the back door . " I guess she doesn 't need them now . You could take those . " He walked to the door and looked out . " Mom always liked to garden too . Dad 's let the yard go since she died . He 's let everything go , really . " After that he tried to pre - empt such questions : get the big one out the way right away . " Where 's that laundry soap with the lemon on the box ? My wife died , I have to figure these things out myself now , " he would say to the clerk , see the surprise and pity cross her face , and think , ok , that 's done now . Bill looked at him , then away again . " You shouldn 't be coming over here every night , son . You have a family of your own now . I can manage . " " Doesn 't seem like it , Dad . Look at you sitting here with the lights off and not eating all day . Why don 't you just go over and see Susan and Elise in the afternoons ? Susan 's stuck at home a lot of the time , and you 'd enjoy seeing your granddaughter . Wouldn 't you ? " Lying awake at night , listening to Elise snuffling and sighing , waiting for her to wake up again , Jack breathing on her other side , Susan sometimes imagined walking away from it all . Pack a few clothes in a bag and go , back to the life she had had before . This usually ended with her crying , holding the quilt over her face , knowing that the strands that bound her to her child were already too strong to break without breaking pieces of herself . Sometimes her crying would wake Jack , who would pat her shoulder sleepily or pull her into his arms , where she would sob harder . He never asked her why she cried in the night , why a new mother would have such a weight of grief while her baby slept in the crib next to their bed , the innocent life that had changed theirs forever . Bill sat at his kitchen table , staring at the empty chair on the other side , and wondered why he stayed . Why keep living ? For Jack , came the easy answer , but what kind of father was he now , sitting here in the dark house , unable to get up to turn on the lights and be forced to look at the emptiness of his house . He dreaded Jack 's visit every evening , the way he studied him , sat in Fran 's chair and watched to make sure he ate . The boy had his own grieving to do ; his mother had been close to him in a way Bill could never approach , this solemn child who seemed to be always watching him . Bill didn 't tell him that he had stopped leaving the house during the day for fear of meeting people and having to talk about Fran , and see the wary pity on their faces . He walked at night , after midnight when the streets were empty . He walked past the little house in the big yard next to Jack and Susan 's , where he and Fran had started out . Since Jack told him the tenants had moved out , he had started going into the yard , to the garden . Susan stood at the sink and held a bottle of breast milk under the cold tap ; Jack had suggested they get Elise used to a bottle so he could take over some of the night - time feedings . She had overheated the milk and was trying to cool it down to the right temperature . She squeezed a couple of drops onto the inside of her wrist : still too hot . She put the bottle in the stream of cold water and looked out the window . Bill came around the corner of the house next door into the yard . He stopped and looked at the garden . Susan turned the tap off . Bill went to the house , opened the screen and tried the door ; it opened and he stood a moment on the threshold , peering in . He glanced back over his shoulder and went in . Susan tested the milk on her wrist again and went to get Elise from the crib . When she had fed her the bottle and was burping her on her shoulder she checked the neighbour 's yard out the window . Bill was sitting on the bench beside the back door , hands in his lap and shoulders hunched forward . Bill sat on the bench and tried to imagine Fran there beside him , Fran in the garden pulling weeds , pulling carrots and waving the leafy clump at him , smiling . He couldn 't see her . She wasn 't there . Not there . " Bill . " He started and looked over at the yard next door . For a moment he saw Fran standing there with their baby son on her shoulder . When she spoke again , he saw it was his daughter - in - law at the fence , Susan , the young girl . " Elise couldn 't sleep . It 's a lot more pleasant out here ; it 's so hot in the house . Could you not sleep either ? " Bill turned back to the garden , the bare earth sprouting a faint flush of green weeds . Susan was still waiting at the fence . Bill got up and went over to her . The baby , his granddaughter , slept in her arms . He reached out and laid his hand on Elise 's downy head . So soft . He could barely remember Jack at this age . He looked at Susan , and saw how strained her face was in the white summer moonlight . " Of course . She 's getting to be so heavy these days . There 's a seat here on the porch . " He crossed the fence and sat where Susan showed him . She handed him the baby , who snuffled and moved her head on his chest . He bent his head and smelled her milky - sweet scent . " You go on in to bed , Susan . You must be exhausted . I 'll bring her in in a bit . " Susan looked as if she was going to say something , then just nodded and went in . Bill sat on the porch with his head bent over the baby . " Elise Frances , " he murmured . " Fran . " Jillian Harvey lives in Nelson , BC . Mainly she is a single mother of four , and she pays the bills ( almost ) by working as a grocery store clerk , which at least has a more regular paycheque than her previous career as an organic farmer . Writing is her passion and what happens in the early mornings , lunch hours and in bed before sleep . She has written content for websites and her short story ' Summer Range ' won second prize in the 2012 Okanagan Short Story Contest . Posted by TDR acknowledges that " The Danforth " is on land that is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee , and most recently , the territory of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation . The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt covenant , an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes . It was also the territory of the Huron Wendat , who were driven out by war . Today , Toronto ( from the Haudenosaunee word Tkaronto ) is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island . TDR is grateful to share this community , this territory .