Every house on the block looked more or less the same. They were all mid-1900s stucco boxes. There were rows of flip-up garage doors, blandly painted walls coated in spiderwebs, and yards full of weeds. Some yards had degenerated into pure crabgrass and dried-out trees. Others lawns had taken the final step, reverting to the purity of the desert sands from whence they’d come. Water was expensive in the city, and not everyone could afford to water their patch of land.My house was on the right, the third from the corner. There wasn’t much house left, however. Looking at the devastation, my first thought was that it must have burned down, although it looked more thoroughly destroyed than a burnt house should. All that stucco and the old brick fireplace—something should have survived. Instead, it reminded me of a bomb crater. Only the farthest corner of the garage stood, a sooty finger of concrete and charcoaled two-by-fours.Getting over my shock, I walked with quiet care among the silent eddies of ash.
