Kevin wondered why his neighbor Ruth lived and slept in her car, even though she had a home only a few feet away. As friendly as she was, Kevin never saw her go into her house. When Kevin finally did enter her house, he discovered why she never went in. He couldn’t believe his eyes; the house was entirely unlivable. “Hello wonderful people, I’m Jamie Buck from Wonderbot, and here is firefighters let Woman’s House burn after realizing what was inside.
Despite living across the road from Ruth for several years, the pair didn’t actually know each other very well at all. The only thing Kevin really knew about Ruth was that she had retired several years ago and that she lived alone. He had no idea, however, that soon they would have a very unique friendship. Every night, Kevin saw Ruth go to sleep in her car.
He couldn’t understand why she would choose to live like this instead of walking a few feet to her home. Instead, Kevin watched Ruth and realized that he hadn’t seen her going into her house in weeks. Something wasn’t right. Whenever Kevin walked past her car, he would stop and check on Ruth, making sure she was awake. They would have a brief conversation, and soon Kevin started to piece her story together. Kevin felt sad by the fact that Ruth lived and slept in a car. He knew there had to be a reason for choosing to sleep in her own driveway instead of her home. Kevin could tell that her situation embarrassed Ruth whenever he passed by and looked in her car. However, he couldn’t figure out why she would be in there. She owned her own home and her own car. She retired, and everything seemed fine. She seemed to have a good life, so what was going on? It was easy to see something was wrong when he looked at her house. All the windows had the blinds closed, and the house wasn’t in the best state of repair. Everything had been neglected; the grass was overgrown, the windows were dirty, and even the paint had faded. Kevin wondered if she needed a hand taken care of the house. One of the biggest signs of neglect was the fact that a window at the top of the house was broken and had been for some time. Kevin thought that animals had perhaps moved in, which would scare anyone out of their house. However, Kevin soon found out the real reason why the window was left broken, and it broke his heart. Kevin was walking past her car one day when he heard Ruth crying. He immediately ran to check on her and found her desperately looking through the plastic bags in the back seat of her car. “What’s wrong?” Kevin asked Ruth. Ruth looked at him, and when she spoke, the mystery of her home was solved. On a normal day, Ruth would walk to the gym and use the bathroom and get cleaned up before getting something to eat from a fast food place.
Then she would go back to her car to keep an eye on things and to sleep. Unfortunately, Ruth’s car was in an equally bad shape as her house and had broken down and couldn’t run. As Ruth looked over the belongings in her car, she took a mental count of what she had with her when she made the choice to leave the home she had lived in to start living out of her car. She gathered the objects that meant the most to her, but she soon discovered that she left one very important object inside. When Burns saw Ruth searching through her belongings, he wondered if an item had gone missing.
Ruth soon made this apparent. She stopped fumbling long enough to point a finger towards her home. “In the house,” Ruth said with tears in her eyes. “I left it in the house.” Ruth seemed afraid to even step foot in her home and away from the safety of her car, which wasn’t even mobile anymore.
She then questioned Burns, “Maybe you can go inside and get it?” Burns was up for the challenge and to finally find out what he had been wanting to know for months. What was in that house that Ruth had to escape from? Kevin took the task on himself and told Ruth that he would venture into the home to find Ruth’s precious belonging. Kevin found out that she was looking for a photo of her parents that she had left inside the house. As Kevin started walking towards the house, the sight of the broken roof tiles on the front lawn made him look up in terror. How long had that roof had a hole in it? The closer Kevin walked towards the house, the more apparent it became why Ruth decided to turn her back on the home she lived in for so many years. Just a glimpse into the window showed piles and piles of clothes and garbage, and papers. And the closer Kevin got to the house, the stronger a displeasing smell became.
Kevin opened the front door and had to move immediately as piles of trash fell at his feet. It was as if the door was the only thing in keeping all the garbage in the house from spilling into the front lawn. Had he made a huge mistake agreeing to search this home? Ruth told Burns that she was looking for an old photo of her parents. When Burns entered the house, it was immediately.
