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.
“What exactly are you doing?”
For one second, I thought I was imagining what I saw. Then I followed the cable with my eyes.
Monica’s white Tesla sat pressed up close to my property line, and a thick black cable ran from the side of the car straight to the outdoor outlet on my garage wall.
I threw on my robe and slippers and walked out into the cool night air, my heart beating harder than it had in months.
Monica leaned against her car, scrolling on her phone, calm as a Sunday morning.
“Eleanor, come on.”
“Monica,” I said, my voice tighter than I meant it to be. “What exactly are you doing?”
She looked up without a trace of shame.
“Charging my car. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal,” I answered, folding my arms, “is that cable is plugged into MY house.”
