I stayed quiet when my neighbor stole my things — and even when she used my electricity. But the night I finally fought back, karma struck twice. The second blow was one she never saw coming.
Most mornings, the biggest decision I had to make was whether the tomatoes needed watering before breakfast.
At sixty-four, I liked it that way.
I’d had enough surprises for one lifetime, and after thirty-two years in the same little suburban house, there wasn’t much left in it that could surprise me.
The number was nearly double.
That morning, I poured my coffee, opened the mail, and found out I was wrong.
Except this time, I couldn’t.
I blinked. Then I blinked again.
“That can’t be right,” I said aloud, to nobody but the cat.
The number was nearly double. Not a few dollars off. Double.
I checked the account number. I checked the meter reading. I even walked out to the little box on the side of my garage and squinted at it, as if the digits might apologize and correct themselves.
“Old fridges eat power.”
They didn’t.
I came back inside and called my daughter Diane — because that’s what widows do when something doesn’t add up. We call our daughters and pretend we just 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.”
Monica had trouble.
“The fridge is younger than you are, honey.”
I told myself she was busy.
Six months ago, my garden gnome disappeared. A silly little thing my husband bought me at a flea market the summer before he passed. He’d pressed it into my hands and grinned. ‘For the garden, El. Every yard needs a little nonsense.’
Two days later, I spotted the gnome sitting cheerfully by Monica’s front steps, wearing a fresh coat of blue paint like it had always lived there.
I never said a word.
Then the lawn mower went missing from my garage. It came back a week later, tank empty, blade dull, and no note. I told myself she was busy. Three kids. Give grace.
Two hundred and twenty-seven dollars.
I wasn’t the only one. Frank across the street had complained once about a ladder Monica had “borrowed” and forgotten to return. At the time, I’d laughed it off. That was Monica. She borrowed first and asked later.
Looking back, I should have realized that people like Monica don’t stop when nobody stops them.
“Keep the peace, Eleanor,” I muttered, the way I had been muttering it for a decade.
I looked down at the bill in my hand. Two hundred and twenty-seven dollars — for a woman who watches PBS and boils one kettle a day.
I followed the cable with my eyes.
Something in this house was drinking electricity like a thirsty horse, and I intended to find out what.
****
But one night, I couldn’t sleep at all, and even my pills weren’t helping.
The hum was faint — the kind of sound a person notices only at midnight, when everything else is quiet. I was sitting up in bed, staring at the ceiling, when I heard it again through the open window.
I pulled the blinds back an inch and squinted out at the driveway.
