Betty, a girl’s name that trended in the late twenties, to fade in popularity in the mid-thirties, to disappear by World War II. Betty had become largely housebound in the last decades of the 20^th century. Her driver’s license had been taken away. She had sold the large house where she raised her children. She had moved to the converted double bay garage of the ranch house owned by her son. It was just one room – no attempt had been made to make it a studio apartment. Just one room, almost square, with windows on two sides, a single door that led to the laundry room for the main house, a bed, always carefully made, in one corner, a fake illuminated fireplace, with a light and mechanical shutter to simulate flames, and vertical electric heating elements behind vents to either side of the flames, and a mantle, barely deep enough to precariously display photographs of grandchildren. The fireplace stood centered on the wall between two windows. Two stuffed chairs delineated a sitting area. In another corner stood a small kitchen table with two kitchen chairs, and a sideboard with an electric kettle, a drip coffee maker, and a small microwave.

A CB-radio and a police scanner sat on a side table between the chairs next to the fireplace. Throughout the day, the scanner periodically crackled, then issued a report. On a table next to the other chair sat a bulky, ivory, rotary dial telephone. From that chair, Betty could see her scanner, reach for the phone, and start the contact tree to friends to report what had just called police to a scene. She could pass a whole day waiting for a report to pass on – most often there were just radio checks – but things always picked up in the early evening or in the summer, just before noon when there always seemed to be an ambulance run to the beach.