Bernadette Connors held the baguette in her fingertips and smiled through her screen door. They had finally put windows on the highrise across Rainey Street.

Her little bungalow, which over the sixty years she had lived there had settled into the earth on one side, now leaned a few degrees toward the north. But since she had come and gone from the house every day for all of those sixty years, Bernadette never noticed until that very moment, when her bungalow reflected back to her at that slanted angle against the perfectly plumb grid of shining new windows on the highrise.

She loved her house and kissed the chipping paint on the door frame before shuffling to the street. Once there, she could hardly look at the gutted houses lining the block.

No, she would never forget the autumn when all of her neighbors sold out to the developer. And she would not believe it, a year later, when the warm living rooms where she once played cards on Saturday nights became the best bars and nightclubs in the city.

“Foolish,” she chided, passing the last house under hammer and nail.

At the end of the street, things still felt like they used to. Overgrown, untouched, left alone. Bernadette slipped through the buttonbush and followed her worn path to the river. Humming quietly, she untied her boots and walked barefoot across the muddy bank to the lapping edge of the autumn waters.

A red-eared slider floated to the surface and Bernadette tore the end off the baguette. “At least you’re still here,” she said, tossing it to the turtle. Sculls pulled by swiftly in the languid river.

Bernadette unbuttoned the top her blouse and let the sun shine on her chest.

The sound of a jackhammer puttered over the river and spooked the turtle, and he descended back into the murk, leaving the soggy bread suspended beneath the surface. Bernadette shrugged and dropped the rest of the baguette by her feet. With a small smile, she closed her eyes and pushed her toes deeper into the mud.