I called the parking enforcement line for our complex. The property management company had posted the number on every door in the fall, after the second time my mother fell. They said violators in accessible spaces would be ticketed and towed, no warning.
I read the plate number out loud to the dispatcher. Rhonda stood there holding her keys.
She said I was being dramatic. She said she was only going to be a minute.
The man with the dog stopped walking. He said, you said that yesterday. And the day before. The mail carrier did not say anything. She just nodded.
For months I was the guy who stalks the parking lot, and all it took was two photos and one phone call to show everyone what we had been walking past every day.
The tow truck came in twenty minutes. Rhonda had not moved the car. She was still arguing on the phone with someone when it pulled out of the lot with her sports car on the back.
I helped my mother inside. Her wrist was throbbing. I made her tea and she told me not to make a fuss.
That afternoon, the property manager, a man named Jerome, knocked on our door. He had seen the report. He said he had no idea my mother had been falling. He said the one accessible space by the main entrance was not enough for a building with six residents who used mobility aids.
Within two weeks, there were three accessible spaces by the door, freshly painted. Jerome had the maintenance crew salt the walkway every morning before six. He put up a new sign too. Bright blue. Hard to miss.
Rhonda paid three hundred dollars to get her car out of the impound lot. She did not speak to me for a while.
Then one Saturday in February, I came out to the lot and saw her standing beside my mother at the entrance. It had snowed overnight. Rhonda had a shovel. She had cleared the whole path from the accessible spaces to the door, all the way down to the pavement.
My mother told me later what happened. Rhonda had seen her struggling with the door that morning and came over to help. They got to talking. My mother told her about the falls, and the wrist, and how she had stopped going to church because the walk scared her.
Rhonda said she never thought about it. She said she was always in a rush, and it was just a parking space to her. She said she felt terrible.
Now Rhonda drives my mother to church on Sunday mornings. She parks in a regular space at the far end of the lot and walks back to get her. My mother says she drives too fast, but she likes her.
Last week, Rhonda knocked on our door with a tin of cookies. She said they were for my mother, and one of them was for me. She said I could pick which one.
I picked the biggest one. She laughed.