The Crossroads is a quiet, deliberately planned suburban neighborhood somewhere in North America—the kind of place that could sit on the edge of any small city or aging commuter town. The houses were built in the 1990s, when the idea of a close-knit community still shaped the way neighborhoods were drawn.

Since then, the areas beyond have filled in with newer developments, but this section hasn’t quite kept up. Paint peels, lawns go to seed, and a few houses sit empty long enough for kids to invent stories about them.

One main street, Harmonic Close, runs north to south through the center of the neighborhood. It connects to Highway 2 at the south end and stops at Echo Avenue in the north. On the south side of Echo Avenue, there are houses on both sides of Harmonic—eight on each. But the north side rises into a hill lined with trees. At the intersection of Echo and Harmonic, there’s a small overlook cleared of brush, where you can see the whole city spread out below.

Between Echo Avenue and Melody Lane, another east-west street, lies Cadence Court. On the west side of Harmonic, Cadence has eight houses on both the north and south sides. On the east side, there are eight houses to the north and seven to the south—the missing space taken up by a small park at the end of the road.

Farther south, between Melody Lane and Highway 2, runs Sonata Street. It’s much like Cadence Court: eight houses on the west side, both north and south; and on the east, seven houses to the north and eight to the south. The final building on the east end of Sonata is the community center, large enough to fill two lots.

Melody Lane is the broadest street, divided by a central median. The west side is lined with trees and picnic tables; the east side faces a pond. At its intersection with Harmonic Close, there’s a roundabout with a gazebo at its heart—the center of the Crossroads in both name and spirit.