For as long as I had lived on that street, everyone avoided the old woman at the very end of it. Her house sat slightly apart from the others, tucked behind overgrown hedges and shaded by two ancient oak trees whose branches reached over her roof like protective arms. The paint on her porch railings had peeled years ago, and the windows were always covered with thin, yellowed curtains. People whispered about her without really knowing anything. They called her “Madame Zada,” as if giving her a mysterious title made it easier to keep their distance. Some said she was strange. Others said she was bitter. A few claimed she had once been rich and had lost everything. No one could agree on the story, but everyone agreed on one thing: she was better left alone. I noticed her often when I walked my dog in the evenings. She would sit on her porch in a wooden rocking chair, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on the road as if waiting for something that never came. There was nothing threatening about her, nothing dramatic. Just loneliness, quietly aging in plain sight. At first, I was like everyone else. I nodded politely when I passed, never stopping. I told myself she probably preferred it that way.