It began with ten minutes. Roberta would leave her SUV on my drive while she visited someone across the road, and ten minutes stretched to an hour, then three, then overnight. I asked politely and she always agreed and never once meant it. I bought a sign, PRIVATE DRIVEWAY, NO PARKING, and she parked beside it and told me I was making a huge deal out of nothing. She was right that the space sat empty most days. After my husband died there was only my car. Empty is not the same as available, though she never learned the difference. Then came the doctor’s appointment at 8:15 that I had waited weeks for, and twenty minutes of knocking and calling at her door, and her strolling out that afternoon to say she had been asleep, and shrugging, and smiling.
So on Monday I let her park, poured a second coffee, and watched thirty invited cars fill my drive and the gravel lane behind it while she slept. When she came out in a robe demanding I move them, I told her I could not, and that she barely used her car anyway.