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I returned 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 ended the call, I stood by the kitchen window and looked 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 crookedly in her driveway.
I had already learned that Monica had a complicated idea of where her belongings ended and everyone else’s began.
I just hadn’t realized how far that attitude went.
Six months earlier, my garden gnome vanished.
It was a silly 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 disappeared, I saw it beside Monica’s front steps.
She had painted it blue.
I could still recognize the chipped nose.
I said nothing.
