THREE HOUSES DOWN THE STREET

     When  my daughter was around five years old she used to play toss the ball with a little red haired girl who lived three houses down the street.  The little girl was around eight years old and  they played in front of our house when I lived in Daly City, California. The houses in the Serramonte subdivision had garages and what would be, in other houses,  a laundry room and basement on the ground floor with living quarters upstairs on the second floor. Our house was built like that.

       The little red haired girl had two older brothers and her mother was a separated or divorced single mother.  This was in the 1970's and one afternoon police cars and ambulances pulled up in front of their house.  The mother had given the children sleeping medication in a drink or food, put them in their beds, sealed all the windows and outside doors and gone downstairs to the garage and started her car.  She took sleeping pills herself and when the car finally ran out of gas they were all dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.
        I was told she did this because she was despondent over the breakup of her marriage.  When they were found they had been in there a week and they were found because her ex was a San Mateo County sheriff who had been trying to get in touch with his family.  Because they were so badly decomposed the people from the Coroner's Office processed the house in haz mat suits with respirators.
       When it went on the the market the house sold for practically nothing because of what had happened.  I was really surprised it sold as fast as it did and wondered if they were able to get the odor out.  A couple bought the house, the man was a longshoreman on the docks in San Francisco.  He had a side business offering for sale from the house merchandise that had "fallen off the truck".
        I never went in the house and didn't know the family that died except for the little girl.  I don't think my daughter, who is now in her forties, remembers and I didn't discuss it with her before writing.  I'm sure we will when she reads this.
        I always thought it was curious that the new people had an orange cat.