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.
Then my lawn mower disappeared from the garage.
It reappeared a week later with an empty tank, a dull blade, and no explanation.
Again, I said nothing.
Three children, I told myself.
She’s busy.
Give her some grace.
Monica did the same thing to other people.
Frank, who lived across the street, once complained that she’d “borrowed” his ladder and forgotten to return it.
At the time, I laughed.
That was Monica.
She borrowed first and asked later.
Looking back, I should have understood that people rarely stop crossing boundaries when nobody ever makes them stop.
“Keep the peace, Eleanor,” I muttered.
I’d been telling myself that for years.
Then I looked at the bill again.
Two hundred and twenty-seven dollars.
For a woman who watched PBS, boiled one kettle a day, and didn’t even use the air conditioner much.
Something was consuming electricity.
And I was going to find out what.
One night, I couldn’t sleep.
Even my pills weren’t helping.
Sometime around midnight, I noticed a faint humming sound through the open bedroom window.
It was the sort of noise you’d never hear during the daytime.
I pulled the blinds aside.
At first, I thought I was imagining what I saw.
Then my eyes followed the thick black cable.
Monica’s white Tesla was parked unusually close to our shared property line.
The cable ran from her car directly to the outdoor outlet on my garage.
I pulled on my robe and slippers and walked outside.
My heart was pounding harder than it had in months.
Monica was leaning casually against the car, scrolling through her phone.
“Monica,” I said. “What exactly are you doing?”
She glanced up without a hint of embarrassment.
“Charging my car. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that cable is plugged into MY house.”
She rolled her eyes and slid the phone into her back pocket.
