Hope Mendoza knew every sound her house made, and because of that, she knew the moment something inside it changed.
The old brick house on the South Side of Chicago had been speaking to her for thirty-seven years. In winter, the pipes clicked twice before heat began to rise through the radiators. In summer, the back screen door sighed when the humidity swelled the frame. The refrigerator hummed in uneven bursts, as if it needed to gather courage before doing its job. The hardwood floors whispered beneath slippers in the morning and complained beneath boots by the front door. When the wind came hard off the lake and turned the windows cold, the house settled with low creaks that used to make her husband, Anthony, smile from behind his newspaper.
“Listen to that,” he would say. “House is talking again.”
And Hope would answer, “Then you better listen. She’s older than both of us in spirit.”
