For Rent

The house at the end of the street had a sign put up this week — it's for rent. It's only a small house, on a tiny plot of land, but it seems familiar and cozy, from the outside, at least. This area was once a vacation community, long ago, where people would spend a few weeks or months during the summer, in small houses near the lake. In time, people came to live here year round, and the small houses were replaced by larger ones, though traces of the original community still remain. Many of these small houses have been purchased and restored over the past several years.

I don't know who had been living there. (I don't know all that much about most of my neighbors, really.) From time to time, I've seen a woman come and go, as I've driven past, and I believe she had a young daughter, perhaps other children. I wonder what's become of them. Where did they go? Were they evicted, because she was unable to pay the rent? Or was there another, more hopeful reason?