I stayed silent when my neighbor took things from my property. I even tried to ignore it when she started using my electricity. But the night I finally stopped letting her walk over me, karma struck twice. And the second blow was something she never saw coming.
Most mornings, the hardest decision I made was whether my tomatoes needed watering before breakfast.
At sixty-four, I liked my life that way.
After enough surprises to fill one lifetime, thirty-two years in the same little suburban house had taught me to appreciate ordinary days.
Then one morning, I poured my coffee, opened the electric bill, and discovered ordinary had apparently left without warning.
I stared at the amount.
Then stared again.
“That can’t be right,” I said aloud, though the only one listening was my cat.
The bill was almost twice what I normally paid.
Not ten or twenty dollars more.
Nearly double.
I checked the account number.
Then the meter reading.
Finally, I walked outside to the utility box beside my garage and squinted at the numbers as though they might become embarrassed and correct themselves.
They didn’t.
I went back inside and called my daughter, Diane.
Because when you’re a widow and something doesn’t make sense, apparently you call your daughter while pretending you only wanted to chat.
“Mom, did you leave the AC running with a window open again?”
“I did not,” I said. “I haven’t touched the thermostat since April.”
“Maybe it’s the fridge. Old fridges eat power.”
“The fridge is younger than you are, honey.”
She laughed.
I didn’t.
After we hung up, I stood at the kitchen window looking across the low fence toward my neighbor Monica’s house.
Monica was in her thirties, had three children, a husband who traveled frequently, and a shiny white Tesla that was almost always parked crooked in her driveway.
I’d already learned that Monica had a complicated understanding of where her belongings ended and everyone else’s began.
I just hadn’t realized how far that attitude extended.
Six months earlier, my garden gnome disappeared.
It was a ridiculous little decoration my husband had bought at a flea market the summer before he died.
He’d handed it to me with a grin.
“For the garden, El. Every yard needs a little nonsense.”
Two days after it vanished, I spotted it beside Monica’s front steps.
She had painted it blue.
I could still recognize the chipped nose.
I said nothing.
