“They’re watching us,” I said.
“What?”
“They’re watching us,” I told him again. “They wait until we fix it, then come back. Every time. They know exactly when we’re done.”
Toby rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s creepy.”
“It’s not creepy. It’s personal.”
I looked down at the driveway. On the edge of the lawn, half in the flower bed, there was something dark lying in the mulch. I went out and picked it up.
It was a work boot. A big brown leather one, size thirteen at least, splattered with black paint and caked with mud from my flower bed. Like someone had run through the hydrangeas so fast it came right off their foot.
I stood there holding it.
“Do teenagers wear these?” I asked Toby.
He looked at it. “Not any teenager I’ve ever met.”
The boot went in the garage, in a second grocery bag, next to the white shirt.
That afternoon, I ordered two security cameras with same-day delivery.
We already had a doorbell camera. Toby installed it two years ago after a package went missing. But it was the cheap kind, and it had stopped sending us alerts a few months after we got it. Toby always said it was broken. We’d joked about it at the Fourth of July barbecue.
“It’s basically a decoration,” Toby told everyone, laughing. “A very expensive decoration.”
“So it’s fake,” Kelsie had said.
“Might as well be.”
Everybody laughed. I remembered that, later.
The new cameras came at five. We installed them after dark, so nobody would see. Toby stood on the ladder and hid one beneath the roofline facing the garage. We put another near the porch, tucked behind a hanging flower basket, overlooking the yard and the street.
We told absolutely nobody. Not my sister. Not Toby’s brother. Not Joyce’s Facebook group. Nobody.
Then, for the first time in three days, we didn’t repaint the garage.
“What if they don’t come back because it’s already painted?” Toby asked.
“They’ll come back,” I said. “They want it to look worse. It’s not enough to ruin it once. They want it ruined when the judges come.”
Toby climbed down the ladder and dusted off his hands.
“Tomorrow morning we’ll finally meet our little artist,” he joked.
At 2:30 a.m., my phone buzzed.
Motion detected.
I sat straight up in bed. Toby was snoring. I opened the camera feed with my thumb shaking.
The image was grainy, black and white, that weird gray-green night-vision color. But I could see enough.
A figure in a dark hoodie was rolling black paint across our garage door. Slowly. Carefully. Long strokes, from one side to the other. Like they had all the time in the world.
I watched, frozen.
Suddenly, the person stepped back, admiring their work. They turned slightly. And they pulled down the hood.
The image was grainy, but I recognized that hair. Short. Light. Perfectly styled, even at two-thirty in the morning.
And under the open hoodie, I recognized that jacket.
Quilted. Probably green, though in night vision everything is green.
“No way…” I whispered.
I raced downstairs. I don’t remember putting on my slippers, but later I found them in the hallway, so I must have kicked them off on the way. I went down those stairs so fast I almost fell.
I yanked open the front door just as the figure dropped the paint roller.
“Hey! Stop right there!”
The woman bolted between the houses, disappearing into the darkness before I even reached the driveway. I heard a gate creak. Then nothing.
I stood barefoot on the cold concrete, breathing hard.
“I saw you!” I yelled into the dark.
A dog barked somewhere down the street. Nobody answered.
Toby appeared behind me, barefoot and half-asleep, hair sticking up on one side.
“What happened? Did you catch someone?”
I turned toward him.
“It was Kelsie.”
He blinked.
“Kelsie? Our Kelsie?”
“Yes! I saw her on the camera!”
Toby looked toward her house next door, where every window was dark. Not a single light. Not even a porch light.
“But she’s always been so nice to us.”
“Apparently,” I said, “she’s been nice enough to compliment our house while secretly destroying it!”
We hurried inside and replayed the footage at the kitchen table.
I hit play. There was the figure, painting. There was the step back. There was the turn toward the camera.
And there was a big, blurry smear where her face should have been.
Unfortunately, the picture wasn’t nearly as clear as I’d thought. On my phone, half-asleep and full of adrenaline, I’d seen Kelsie. On the bigger laptop screen, when she turned toward the camera, the image blurred badly. You could see light hair. You could see a jacket. That was about it.
I played it again. And again.
“You can’t really see her face,” Toby admitted.
He was right.
“I know what I saw.”
“I believe you, honey. I do. I’ve seen that jacket a hundred times.” He rubbed his eyes. “But she’ll just deny it. She’ll say a hundred women have that jacket. She’ll say you’re imagining it. And then she’ll go tell everyone on the street you accused her of vandalism with a blurry video.”
He was right about that too.
For a moment, I considered marching next door and banging on her door. I imagined it. Her opening the door in a bathrobe, pretending to be sleepy. Me holding up my phone. Her saying, “Honey, what are you talking about?”
And me standing there in my nightgown looking like a crazy person.
Instead, I decided I needed something she couldn’t explain away.
We returned to the driveway with a flashlight. The abandoned roller and paint tray lay beside the garage, right where she’d dropped them.
I crouched down and examined the thick, glossy black paint. It wasn’t cheap stuff. It was heavy and shiny, like it was made to last forever.
Then an idea struck me.
“If someone keeps buying this stuff,” I said, “somebody must remember selling it.”
The next morning, I called in sick to work. It was the first time in three years.
I photographed the paint, the roller, and the can label, which was half scraped off. Then I drove to our neighborhood hardware store.
I intended to find proof against Kelsie.
I had absolutely no idea what I was about to discover.
Kowalski Hardware was a five-minute drive from our house, a little brick building with a bell over the door and bins of nails you could buy by the pound. I’d been shopping there for years. Every bag of potting soil, every pair of gardening gloves, every hose nozzle. The owner, Frank, knew practically everyone in the neighborhood. He was seventy-something and wore suspenders and remembered your dog’s name.
“Morning!” he greeted me as the bell jingled. “Need more gardening supplies? I got that bone meal you wanted.”
“Actually, Frank, I need your help with something strange.”
I explained what had been happening. The three nights. The repainting. I left out Kelsie. I didn’t want to say her name until I was sure.
Then I showed him the photograph of the black paint.
Frank put on his reading glasses and studied it carefully. He held my phone way too close to his face and then way too far.
“Looks like heavy-duty exterior enamel,” he said. “Oil-based. That stuff’s a nightmare to get off. We carry that exact kind.”
“Has anyone bought it recently?”
He scratched his chin.
“Not a lot of people buy black. It’s mostly for railings, mailboxes, that sort of thing.” He thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, John bought a can just a few days ago.”
I stared at him.
“John? From Maple Street?”
“That’s the one. Big fella, mustache. Lives a few houses down from you, right?”
My stomach tightened.
John had personally assured us he’d been asleep during the vandalism. Sleeping pills, he said. Could’ve been a marching band.
“He said it was for his mailbox,” Frank added. “I didn’t think anything of it.”
John’s mailbox was silver. It had been silver for as long as I’d lived on that street.
“Anyone else?” I asked. My voice sounded strange in my own ears.
Frank thought again.
“Well, Joyce came in with him earlier this week. Joyce from across the street from you? They spent ages looking at paint samples. Arguing about something. I figured they were working on some neighborhood project.” He chuckled. “Joyce is always working on some neighborhood project.”
I thanked him. I bought the bone meal, because I didn’t know what else to do with my hands. And I left, barely noticing the bell above the door.
I sat in my car in the parking lot for a long time.
Kelsie. John. Joyce.
Three people who’d stood in my driveway expressing sympathy.
Three people who’d shaken their heads and said awful and who would do this and you should call the police.
Joyce had told me to call the police.
Back home, I didn’t even take off my coat. I sat down at the kitchen table and opened the laptop.
Then I had a thought.
The doorbell camera. The broken one. The decoration.
Toby always said it stopped sending alerts. But had it stopped recording?
It took me twenty minutes to remember the password to the app. It was our anniversary plus Toby’s favorite football player’s number, because Toby set it up. When I finally logged in, my heart almost stopped.
The camera hadn’t stopped working. Toby had just turned off the notifications by accident two years ago. It had been quietly recording every bit of motion on our porch and front yard the entire time and saving it to the cloud.
Friday night. Saturday night. Sunday night.
It was all there.
The doorbell camera was even worse than the new ones. It was aimed at the porch steps, so the garage was way off on the side of the frame, small and fuzzy. You couldn’t see faces at all.
But this time, I paid attention to everything except the faces.
Friday night, 1:47 a.m. The person was tall and broad-shouldered. They moved slowly, a little stiff, like their back hurt. They were wearing heavy work boots that clomped up the driveway.
Saturday night, 3:12 a.m. The second figure was shorter. Smaller. Quick and jittery. They wore a loose white shirt that glowed in the night vision and a pair of sneakers.
And last night’s visitor had Kelsie’s familiar jacket.
Then I found the best part.
Friday’s clip kept going after the painting stopped. A car’s headlights swung around the corner at the end of the street, and the tall figure panicked. They ran straight through my flower bed, toward the side of the house, and halfway across, one foot came down in the soft mulch and stayed there. The figure kept going, hopping, one boot on and one sock on, and vanished.
Saturday’s clip, the short figure got paint all over the white shirt. They stopped, struggled out of it, and shoved it into my hedge. Then they ran off in a T-shirt.
I replayed the clips twice. Then a third time.
Then I went out to the garage and brought in the two grocery bags. I set the boot and the shirt on the kitchen table next to the laptop.
I leaned back in my chair.
These weren’t random teenagers.
My neighbors had been taking turns vandalizing my garage.
One each night. Like a schedule. Like a potluck sign-up sheet.
The question was no longer who was doing it. It was why three seemingly friendly neighbors wanted my house ruined.
I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the three recordings and the two grocery bags.
Why would Kelsie, John, and Joyce do something like this?
We’d had them over for dinner. Joyce had watched our cat when we went to Toby’s mother’s funeral. John had helped Toby jump-start the car in a snowstorm. Kelsie had brought me soup when I had the flu.
Then I remembered a conversation with Kelsie a few weeks earlier.
We’d been standing at the property line. She was watering her impatiens. I was trimming the hedge that separated our yards.
“Your roses look incredible this year,” she’d said.
“Thanks. I’ve been babying them.”
“Winning twice in a row must be difficult,” she’d said. “People might start thinking nobody else has a chance.”
At the time, I’d laughed. I thought she was joking. I said something like, “Oh, please, your petunias are going to destroy me this year.”
She didn’t laugh back. She just kept watering.
Then there was John, who’d joked during the Fourth of July barbecue that I should give someone else a turn at winning.
“Marian used to say that competition was about the neighborhood,” he’d said, holding a hot dog. “Not about one person.” He smiled when he said it. But he didn’t look at me.
And Joyce…
Joyce had been at the same barbecue. She’d come up to me at the potato salad and casually asked whether the competition judges deducted points for damaged paintwork.
“Like what kind of damage?” I’d asked.
“Oh, you know. Peeling. Graffiti. Whatever.” She waved her hand. “I’m just curious how strict they are.”
I’d told her I thought they were pretty strict. That presentation was a big part of it. She’d nodded, very thoughtfully, and said, “Interesting.”
I felt my face grow hot.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I said out loud to nobody.
I pulled up the competition rules on my laptop. I’d read them a dozen times last year, but I read them again.
The judges were arriving in two days. Exterior appearance, maintenance, and overall presentation were all part of the scoring. Points were taken off for “visible neglect, damage, or disrepair.”
A garage covered in black paint would certainly hurt my chances.
“They’re trying to make me lose,” I whispered.
Toby walked into the kitchen at five-thirty, home from work, loosening his tie.
“Hey. How was the hardware store? Did Frank—”
He stopped. He was looking at the kitchen table. At the boot. At the shirt. At my face.
“Who’s trying to make you lose?” he asked. Because apparently I’d said it out loud again.
I explained everything. I showed him the recordings from the doorbell camera. I told him what Frank had said about John and the mailbox and Joyce and the paint samples. I reminded him about the barbecue. About Kelsie at the hedge.
Toby watched each clip with his arms crossed. When the tall figure lost the boot running through my hydrangeas, he picked up the boot from the table and turned it over.
“Size thirteen,” he said quietly. “John’s got feet like canoes.”
By the time I finished, Toby was furious. I’d seen him angry before, but not like this. His ears were red. His hands were in fists.
“I’m going over there right now.”
He was already turning toward the door.
I caught his arm.
“No.”
“They’ve been destroying our property! Three nights! Do you know how many hours we spent on that door? Do you know how much that paint cost?”
“I know.”
“Then why are you stopping me?”
“Because they’ve already wasted three days of our lives,” I said. “I’m not giving them the satisfaction of watching us beg them to stop.”
Toby frowned. He stood there with his hand on the doorknob.
“So what are we supposed to do? Just let them?”
I glanced through the window at our half-black garage. In the evening light it looked even worse. Like a bruise.
Then, slowly, I smiled.
“I think we’re finally going to let them finish their masterpiece.”
Toby stared at me.
“You’re joking.”
“Not even a little.”
I closed my laptop.
“We’re not repainting that garage again.”
“Honey.”
“We’re leaving it exactly the way it is. For the judges.”
He let go of the doorknob and sat down very slowly across from me.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m scared. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
And I already had an idea for what to do instead.
That afternoon, I stepped outside at the perfect moment.
It was a little after six. Kelsie was watering her flowers in her green jacket, which honestly took some nerve. John was tinkering with something near his driveway, bent over a lawn mower. Joyce stood by her mailbox across the street, flipping through catalogs.
Perfect audience.
I walked down to the end of my driveway and stood right in front of the black garage. I put my hands on my hips.
“Well,” I announced, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Toby and I decided we’re done repainting the garage.”
Kelsie immediately turned off her hose.
“Oh, honey,” she said, walking over. “That’s such a shame. Especially with the competition coming up.”
I sighed dramatically. I’m not an actress. But I’d watched enough of Toby’s mother over the years to know how to sigh.
“I suppose there’s no point trying to win anymore. Every time we fix it, they just come back. We’ll just leave it the way it is.”
John straightened up from his lawn mower.
“Probably for the best,” he called over. “These competitions aren’t worth getting upset over.”
“There’s always next year,” Joyce added cheerfully from across the street.
I watched their faces.
Kelsie looked positively delighted. She tried to hide it behind a sad little frown, but her eyes were shining. John suddenly seemed very interested in his tools, studying a wrench like it held the secrets of the universe. And Joyce couldn’t quite suppress her smile. It kept creeping up at the corners of her mouth, and she kept pushing it back down.
They were terrible actors.
Honestly, it was almost insulting. Three days of creeping around my yard in the dark, and they couldn’t even fake being sad for thirty seconds.
“Well, if there’s anything I can do,” Kelsie offered, putting a hand on my arm. “I could bring over some cookies. Help you feel better.”
“Actually,” I said, “I was thinking of inviting everyone over half an hour before the judging starts on Thursday. Just a little get-together to celebrate the neighborhood. Sandwiches. Lemonade. Who cares about the competition, right? It’s about community.”
I almost choked on the word community.
The three of them exchanged surprised glances. John looked at Joyce. Joyce looked at Kelsie. Kelsie looked at me.
Then Kelsie beamed.
“What a wonderful idea!”
“I’ll bring fruit salad,” Joyce said quickly.
“I can bring lemonade,” John said. “Marian’s recipe.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Ten-thirty on Thursday. Don’t be late.”
I smiled and headed inside.
Toby was waiting by the kitchen window. He’d watched the whole thing through the blinds like a spy.
“You’re really throwing a party for the people who vandalized our garage?”
“Not exactly,” I replied, slipping off my shoes. “I’m giving them front-row seats.”
The next two days, I was busy.
Toby kept asking what I was doing, and I kept saying, “You’ll see,” which drove him crazy.
On Tuesday night, I called my nephew, Marcus, who was nineteen and worked part-time doing A/V for weddings. I asked if I could borrow a projector and a portable screen.
“For what, Aunt Jen?”
Oh, I should say. My name is Jen. Nobody on Maple Street ever called me that. To them I was always “honey.”
“For a presentation,” I told him.
“What kind of presentation?”
“The kind where people find out what they did.”
There was a long pause. “Okay. I’m in. Do you need me to set it up?”
“I need you to set it up in my neighbor’s front yard at ten-fifty Thursday morning while she’s at my house eating sandwiches.”
Another pause. “Is this legal?”
“It’s a sidewalk,” I said. “It’s public. You’ll be fine.”
“Cool,” Marcus said. “Can I watch?”
On Wednesday morning, I spent two hours at the kitchen table editing the clips. The doorbell camera footage and the new camera footage, all put together in order. Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Monday. I added the date and time on each one in big white letters, like a true crime documentary.
Toby came in, looked over my shoulder, and said, “You’re scaring me a little bit.”
“Good.”
On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the craft store and bought a pumpkin, some straw, a wooden stake, and a bag of zip ties.
On Wednesday night, I dug the boot and the white shirt out of their grocery bags.
“What are you going to do with those?” Toby asked.
“Decorate.”
On the morning of the competition, Toby found me in the kitchen at seven a.m., already dressed, checking the time on the microwave.
“Remind me why we’re inviting these people over again?”
“Because I need them all in one place.”
“That sounds like something a movie villain would say.”
I laughed and handed him a plate of sandwiches. Turkey and cheese, cut into triangles. I’d even cut the crusts off.
“Just keep everyone entertained for a while once they get here,” I said. “I have a few things to take care of.”
“What things?”
“You’ll see.”
Toby narrowed his eyes.
“I’ve been married to you for fifteen years,” he said. “That answer usually means trouble.”
“Then you know better than to ask questions.”
He looked at me for a long time. Then he kissed my forehead.
“I married a lunatic,” he said fondly.
“You married a woman with very nice hydrangeas.”
“Same thing.”
At six a.m., before anyone on the street was awake, I’d already been out. I’ll explain later. Let’s just say that the zip ties had been put to good use, and I’d been very, very quiet.
Half an hour before the judges were due, our doorbell rang.
The broken doorbell. The decoration. I smiled at it as I opened the door.
Kelsie arrived first, carrying a plate of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in plastic. She was wearing a floral sundress and, I noticed, no green jacket. John followed with a big glass pitcher of lemonade with lemon slices floating in it. He was wearing sneakers instead of his boots. And Joyce appeared with a bowl of fruit salad and a big, bright smile.
“Come in, come in!” I said. “Thank you all so much for coming.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Kelsie said.
I welcomed everyone. I put the cookies on a plate. I put out cups for the lemonade. We exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather, which was perfect, and Joyce’s grandson, who had just started kindergarten, and John’s bad knee.
“Your knee’s bothering you?” I asked John.
“Little bit,” he said. “Must’ve twisted it.”
“Running?” I asked.
He looked at me. “What?”
“Do you run? For exercise?”
“No,” he said slowly. “No, I don’t run.”
“Huh,” I said. Then I glanced at my watch.
“Excuse me. I just need to finish some preparations.”
I caught Toby’s eye before slipping away.
He understood his assignment.
“So!” Toby announced, clapping his hands together loudly as I walked toward the back door. “Who wants to place bets on how many points we’ll lose for our garage?”
I heard Kelsie give an uncomfortable laugh as I slipped out.
“Oh, Toby, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m serious. Personally, I’m hoping they’ll appreciate the modern art. Very bold. Very mysterious. Black and white. Like a tuxedo.
John chuckled. “Maybe you’ll start a trend.”
“Wonderful,” Toby replied. “Next year, I’ll paint the whole house black. Save everyone the trouble of judging.”
Joyce nearly choked on her lemonade.
I went out the back door, cut through the side yard, and texted Marcus.
Go.
He texted back a thumbs-up and a skull emoji.
Inside, for the next twenty minutes, Toby kept the conversation going, offering sandwiches and making increasingly ridiculous suggestions for future home improvements. He told me later that he talked about putting a moat around the house. Then a giant inflatable gorilla on the roof. Then a fountain shaped like his own face.
By the time I returned through the back door, slightly out of breath, Kelsie was laughing at his proposal to replace our entire lawn with artificial grass and plastic flamingos.
“Fifty flamingos,” Toby was saying. “Minimum. Pink ones. And one black one. In honor of the garage.”
Kelsie’s laugh got a little thinner.
Then a car pulled up outside.
I glanced through the window and smiled.
“Perfect timing,” I said. “The judges are here.”
The three judges stepped out of a silver sedan, carrying clipboards and smiling politely. Two women and a man. I recognized the man from last year. Mr. Patterson. He was the head judge, a retired high school principal, tall and gray with a voice that made you sit up straight even if you hadn’t been in school for thirty years.
“Welcome!” I called, walking down the driveway.
Our neighbors followed behind me, still chatting about Toby’s flamingos, holding their lemonade cups.
The judges began with my flower beds, admiring the roses and hydrangeas I’d spent months tending.
“These are beautiful,” one of the women said, bending down to look at the hydrangeas. “Such a deep blue. How do you get them like that?”
“Coffee grounds,” I said. “And a lot of talking to them.”
“And your hedges are remarkably neat.”
“Thank you. My husband says I spend more time with them than I do with him.”
“Because they listen better!” Toby added.
Everyone laughed. Even Kelsie.
The judges made notes on their clipboards. They admired the hanging baskets. They admired the walkway. One of the women even took a picture of the roses on her phone.
Then we reached the garage.
The judges stopped.
Its bottom half was still covered in that ugly black paint, thick and glossy, with drips running down onto the driveway. It contrasted horribly with the clean white panels above. In the bright morning sun, it looked even worse than it did at night.
Nobody said anything for a long moment.
One judge raised an eyebrow. Mr. Patterson.
“That’s certainly an interesting design choice.”
Behind him, Kelsie pressed her lips together, barely containing her smile. John suddenly became fascinated with the flowers, bending down to look at my roses like he’d never seen a rose before. And Joyce exchanged a knowing glance with Kelsie.
I saw it. That little look. Like two kids who just got away with something in class.
I smiled pleasantly.
“Thank you. It’s actually part of a larger neighborhood art project.”
The judges looked intrigued.
“An art project?” one of the women asked.
“Oh, yes. Quite a few people contributed.”
I glanced toward my neighbors.
Kelsie’s smile faltered.
“It’s very collaborative,” I said. “You’ll understand when you see the rest.”
Then I gestured down the street.
“Shall we continue? There’s something I’d love to show you at John’s house.”
For the first time that morning, John stopped smiling.
We walked down the sidewalk in a little group. The three judges with their clipboards. Toby, holding a plate of cookies for some reason. Kelsie, John, and Joyce, lagging a little behind. And me, leading the way like a tour guide.
As we approached John’s house, one of the judges suddenly stopped.
“What’s that?”
Beside the sidewalk, at the edge of John’s front yard, stood a decorative weather-vane display. John had put it up years ago. Marian bought it at a craft fair. It was a little iron rooster on a pole with the letters N, S, E, W pointing in every direction.
Hanging from the rooster’s beak, dangling by its laces, was a big brown work boot. Size thirteen. Completely covered in black paint.
It swung a little in the breeze.
“Well,” Mr. Patterson chuckled. “That’s certainly creative.”
John went pale. I mean really pale. He went the color of skim milk.
I turned toward him with my sweetest smile.
“John, would you like to explain the inspiration?”
“I…” John stared at the boot. “I don’t know where that came from!”
“Really?” I said. “How strange. It looks just like your boots. The ones you wear everywhere. The ones you’re not wearing today.”
“Lots of people have boots like that.”
“Size thirteen?”
He didn’t answer.
“Well,” I said brightly. “Let’s keep going.”
At Joyce’s house, another surprise awaited us.
A scarecrow stood beside her vegetable garden, propped up on a wooden stake. It had a carved pumpkin for a head, with a big wide grin, and straw sticking out of its sleeves.
And it was wearing a loose white shirt covered in black paint.
Joyce gasped.
“That’s my shirt!”
The moment it came out of her mouth, she slapped a hand over it. But it was too late. Everyone had heard.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Really? How interesting.”
“Why does it have my clothes?” Joyce said. Her voice had gone very high.
“Oh, I found that shirt near my garage,” I said. “Stuffed in my hedge on Sunday morning. I figured it deserved a proper display.”
Joyce opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again.
The judges exchanged bewildered glances. One of the women had stopped writing on her clipboard. She was just holding her pen in the air, looking back and forth between me and Joyce like she was watching a tennis match.
Kelsie had stopped smiling altogether.
She was standing very still at the back of the group, holding her lemonade cup so tight it had started to crumple.
“One more stop,” I said cheerfully.
Finally, we reached Kelsie’s house.
Marcus had done a great job. A projector sat on a little folding table on the sidewalk, plugged into a long orange extension cord that ran all the way back to our garage. A portable white screen stood on a stand in the middle of Kelsie’s perfect front lawn, right in front of her prize-winning petunias. Second-place petunias, anyway.
Marcus was standing a little way off, leaning against a tree, eating one of my turkey sandwiches. He gave me a small salute.
“What is going on?” Kelsie demanded.
Her voice was sharp now. The sweetness was gone.
“I thought the judges deserved to see the full neighborhood collaboration,” I said.
I pressed play.
The first clip came up, with big white letters: FRIDAY, 1:47 A.M.
A tall, broad-shouldered figure walked up my driveway in heavy work boots, holding a roller. They started painting my garage. Slowly. Stiffly.
The judges leaned forward.
Then the headlights. The panic. The figure running through my hydrangeas, and one boot coming off in the mulch. The figure hopping away on one sock.
Somebody laughed. I think it was one of the judges. She covered it with a cough.
Next clip. SATURDAY, 3:12 A.M.
A shorter figure in a loose white shirt and sneakers. Quick, nervous movements. Paint everywhere. Then the struggle to get out of the shirt, which got stuck over their head for a few seconds. Then shoving it into my hedge and running away in a T-shirt.
Joyce made a small sound, like a balloon losing air.
Next clip. MONDAY, 2:30 A.M. This was the clearest one, from the new camera.
Finally, Kelsie appeared. Rolling black paint across my door in long, careful strokes. Stepping back to admire her work. Turning toward the camera.
And pulling back her hood.
The new camera was clearer than the doorbell. It wasn’t perfect. But on a big screen, in the bright morning, with Kelsie standing right there in front of it, you’d have to be blind to miss it. The hair. The jacket. The way she stood with one hip out, the exact way she was standing right now.
I paused the recording right there, on her face.
Everyone was silent.
“For three nights,” I said, “these people worked very hard to make sure my house wouldn’t look its best today.”
Kelsie crossed her arms.
“That proves absolutely nothing!” she said. “That could be anybody! It’s blurry! You can’t even—”
John suddenly blurted out, “You said the cameras were fake!”
Everyone turned toward him.
He looked like he wanted to swallow his own tongue.
“You said,” he said to Kelsie, quieter, “Toby said the camera was fake. At the barbecue. You said it didn’t record.”
“John,” Kelsie hissed.
Joyce threw up her hands.
“Kelsie told us nobody would ever find out!” she said. “She said it was harmless! She said it was just to even the playing field! She said—”
“Will you two shut up?” Kelsie snapped.
But it was too late.
Once it started, it was like a dam breaking. John started blaming Joyce. Joyce said she only did it once and it was the shirt that gave her away and it was John’s fault for losing the boot. John said Joyce was the one who’d picked the paint color. Joyce said black was the obvious choice, and John said, “Well, why not red, then?” and Joyce said red would look like a crime scene, and John said, “It is a crime scene, Joyce!”
And through all of it, both of them kept saying the same thing: It was Kelsie’s idea. It was all Kelsie’s idea.
“She said you’d win again!” Joyce said, pointing at me. “She said if you won three years in a row, they’d probably make you a judge, and then none of us would ever have a chance!”
“That’s not true!” I said. “Nobody makes you a judge.”
“Well, she said it!”
The judges listened in astonishment as the three practically confessed everything. One of the women had her hand pressed over her mouth. The other was writing very fast on her clipboard.
Marcus was filming the whole thing on his phone. I would talk to him about that later.
Kelsie stood in the middle of her lawn, in front of the screen with her own face on it, and didn’t say anything. Her face had gone a blotchy red.
Finally, Mr. Patterson raised his hand.
He didn’t say anything at first. He just raised it, the way I imagine he used to raise it in a high school cafeteria. And all three of them stopped talking at once.
“That’s enough,” he said.
Silence.
“Deliberately sabotaging another contestant is unacceptable,” he said. “In twenty-two years of this competition, I have never seen anything like it. All three of you are disqualified.”
Kelsie opened her mouth to protest.
“Unless,” he added, very calmly, “you’d prefer we discuss this with the police.”
For once, Kelsie had absolutely nothing to say.
The judges finished their rounds after that. They had six more houses to see. Mr. Patterson shook my hand before they left.
“Mrs. Harmon,” he said, “I want you to know that the damage to your garage door will not be counted against you. Under the circumstances.”
“Thank you.”
“Also,” he said, and for the first time, he smiled, “that was the most entertaining judging I’ve done in twenty-two years.”
Back at our house, Toby and I sat on the porch steps with the leftover sandwiches.
Down the street, John was standing on a step stool, trying to untie his boot from Marian’s rooster. The knot was too tight. He finally just cut the laces with a pocket knife and carried the boot inside without looking up.
Across the street, Joyce’s scarecrow was already gone. So was the shirt.
Kelsie’s house was quiet. The curtains were drawn.
“Well,” Toby said. He took a bite of sandwich. “That happened.”
“That happened.”
“Mr. Patterson said ‘police.’”
“I know.”
“Are you going to call them?”
I thought about it for a long time. I watched a bee crawl around inside one of my roses.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“They’d deserve it.”
“I know they would.”
“But?”
“But I have to live next to them,” I said. “For a long time, probably. And I don’t want to be the woman who called the cops on a sixty-five-year-old widower over a garage door.”
“They didn’t think twice about being the people who painted it.”
“I know.” I sighed. “That’s sort of the point. I don’t want to be like them.”
Toby put his arm around me.
“Okay,” he said. “Then what do you want?”
I looked at the garage door. Half black. Half white. Ugly as sin.
“I want them to fix it,” I said.
That evening, I walked over to John’s house first.
He answered the door in his socks. He looked older than he had that morning. Smaller somehow.
“I’m not here to yell,” I said.
“You could,” he said. “I’d deserve it.”
“I know.”
He stood there in the doorway for a while. Then he stepped aside and let me in.
John’s living room hadn’t changed since Marian died. Same doilies. Same photos on the mantel. And there, on the bookshelf, were four wooden plaques in a row. BEST IN MAPLE GROVE. Four years in a row. All with Marian’s name on them.
He saw me looking.
“She’d be ashamed of me,” he said quietly. “She would have marched me over to your house by my ear.”
“Why did you do it, John?”
He sat down heavily in his recliner. He rubbed his bad knee.
“Kelsie came over in August,” he said. “She’d been crying. She said her ex-husband had gotten remarried and moved his new wife into their old house. The one she had the garden at. She said the yard was the only thing she had left that was hers. And she said you’d win again, and then again, and nobody would ever remember anyone else.” He shook his head. “And I thought about Marian’s plaques. And how nobody talks about her roses anymore. Everyone just talks about yours.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“It sounded like a little thing,” he said. “A little paint. A little mischief. Like we were kids again.” He looked at the boot, which was sitting by the door, still black. “Then I lost my boot in your flower bed and I lay awake all night thinking, What am I doing? I’m sixty-six years old.“
“Then why’d you keep going?”
“Because Joyce had already bought the shirt,” he said, and he almost laughed. “And Kelsie said if we stopped now, we’d just be the ones who did it once. Somehow that sounded worse.”
Joyce cried before I even said anything. She opened the door, saw me, and just burst into tears.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened to me. I’ve never done anything like that in my life. I got a parking ticket in 1994 and I paid it the same day.”
“Joyce.”
“I run the Facebook group! I’m supposed to be the one who catches people!”
“Joyce.”
She stopped. Sniffled.
“You told me to call the police,” I said. “Standing in my driveway. You looked me right in the face.”
She went red all the way up to her hairline.
“I panicked,” she said. “I thought if I acted angry enough, nobody would ever suspect me. I watch a lot of those murder shows.”
“This wasn’t a murder, Joyce.”
“I know! But the principle is the same!”
I didn’t stay long. But I told her what I’d told John.
Kelsie didn’t answer her door.
I knocked three times. I could see her car in the driveway, and I could see the light from the TV flickering behind the curtains.
Finally, I just spoke through the door.
“Kelsie. I know you’re there. I’m not calling the police.”
Silence.
“But you, John, and Joyce are going to repaint my garage door. Saturday morning. Eight a.m. All three of you. You can bring your own paint, or I’ll give you some. White. Not black.”
More silence.
Then, from the other side of the door, very quietly: “Fine.”
That was it. That was all she said.
I walked home.
Saturday morning at eight a.m., they were all there.
John, with a toolbox and a brand new pair of boots. Joyce, in an old sweatshirt and a baseball cap, holding a paint scraper like it might bite her. And Kelsie, arriving last at 8:07, in jeans and a plain gray T-shirt. No green jacket.
Toby sat on the porch with a pitcher of lemonade and a lawn chair and supervised. He was enjoying it far too much.
“You missed a spot,” he called to John at one point.
“I haven’t started yet.”
“Just getting ahead of it.”
Getting oil-based enamel off a garage door is miserable work. Frank had been right. It took them almost five hours. They had to scrape and sand and use paint thinner that made everyone’s eyes water. Joyce got thinner on her sneakers and had to throw them out. John had to stop twice to rest his knee.
Kelsie didn’t say a word the whole morning. She just worked. Scraping, sanding, wiping. She worked harder than either of the other two.
Around noon, I brought out sandwiches. I put the plate on the edge of the driveway without saying anything and went back inside.
When I came out later, the plate was empty.
By two o’clock, the garage door was white again. Clean and smooth and perfect, like nothing had ever happened.
John and Joyce gathered up their things and went home. John nodded at me as he left. Joyce gave me a little wave and said, “I’ll bring you a casserole,” which I think was Joyce for I’m sorry.
Kelsie stayed behind. She was rinsing out the paint brushes with my hose at the side of the house.
I walked over. For a while we just stood there, listening to the water.
“He got married again,” she said finally, without looking up. “Did John tell you?”
“He told me.”
“She’s twenty-nine. She posts pictures of my roses on Instagram. The ones I planted. She calls them ‘my garden.’”
“I’m sorry, Kelsie.”
“Don’t,” she said sharply. Then softer: “Don’t be nice to me. I can’t take that right now.”
She turned off the hose.
“Every year,” she said, “I come in second. Every year, I smile and say there’s always next year. And this year I looked at my yard and I thought, there isn’t. There’s never a next year. There’s just you, winning, and me, smiling.” She shook the water off a brush. “That’s not an excuse. I know it’s not an excuse. I’m just telling you why.”
“You could have told me,” I said. “Any time. You could have come over and said, ‘I’m having a terrible year.’ I’d have made you soup. You made me soup.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“I know,” she said. “That’s the worst part.”
She handed me the clean brushes and walked back to her own yard.
The results were announced the next weekend at the block party.
Every year it’s the same. Folding tables at the end of the street. A bounce house for the kids. Hot dogs. A snow cone machine that never quite works. Mr. Patterson stands up on a milk crate with a microphone that squeals.
Everyone on Maple Street had heard about what happened by then. Joyce’s Facebook group had gone strangely quiet, but Marcus’s video had made the rounds anyway. I’d made him take it down from his own account, but not before about two hundred people had seen it. Someone had already made it into a meme. Mostly the part where John says, “It is a crime scene, Joyce!”
When I walked up to the tables, people kept coming over to pat my shoulder. A woman I’d never met asked me to sign her paper plate.
John came. He stood at the edge of the crowd with his hands in his pockets. Joyce came and stood next to him, wearing sunglasses even though it was cloudy. Kelsie didn’t come at all.
Mr. Patterson climbed up on his milk crate.
“This year,” he said, “has been a very unusual year for the Maple Grove beautification competition.”
Everyone laughed.
“But I’m pleased to say that, after careful consideration, our winner is the same as last year.” He looked down at me. “Mrs. Jennifer Harmon, for her roses, her hydrangeas, her remarkable hedges, and for one of the most memorable garage doors in the history of this competition.”
People clapped. Toby whistled with two fingers in his mouth, which he knows I hate.
I walked up and took the plaque and the envelope with the gift certificate. I said thank you. I didn’t cry this time. I’m not sure why.
When I came back to the table, Toby hugged me.
“Two in a row,” he said. “You’re officially unstoppable.”
“I know,” I said.
And I looked over at the end of the street, where Kelsie’s curtains were still closed.
I spent most of that thousand-dollar gift certificate at Greenleaf the next week. Mulch. Fertilizer. A new climbing rose I’d wanted for years.
And a flat of petunias.
Purple ones. The deep purple kind Kelsie always said she could never find.
I left them on her front porch with a note.
There’s always next year. I mean it this time.
I didn’t sign it. I didn’t need to.
Two days later, I came out in the morning and the petunias were planted along the front of her house. Right where the screen had been.
She didn’t say anything about it. Neither did I. But that Sunday, when I was out trimming the hedge that separates our yards, she came out to water her flowers, and she said, “Your roses look good,” and I said, “Your petunias look better,” and she almost smiled.
It wasn’t friendship. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But it was something.
Here’s what I keep thinking about.
For three days, I thought the worst thing that could happen was losing a competition. I stood at my window every morning looking at that black paint, and I felt like someone had reached into my chest.
But the thing that actually hurt wasn’t the paint. Paint comes off. Toby and I proved that three times, and John, Joyce, and Kelsie proved it a fourth.
What hurt was standing in my driveway while the people who did it told me how awful it was. Taking water bottles from Kelsie. Thanking her for caring.
I don’t know if I’ll ever look at my neighbors the same way. I wave to John every morning. Joyce brought me the casserole, and it was terrible, and I ate it anyway. Kelsie and I talk about flowers over the hedge.
But now I know that the people who smile at you across a fence are just people. They have bad years. They get jealous. They make stupid decisions at two-thirty in the morning in borrowed hoodies. And sometimes, if you let them, they show up at eight a.m. on a Saturday with a paint scraper and fix what they broke.
The garage door is still white.
Well. Almost.
Down in the bottom corner, near the ground, where the driveway meets the door, there’s one little streak of black that Joyce missed with her scraper. It’s about the size of my thumb.
Toby offered to paint over it. Twice.
I told him to leave it.
Every morning when I take out the trash, I look at that little black smudge. And I remember the boot hanging off Marian’s rooster, and the scarecrow in Joyce’s shirt, and Kelsie standing in front of her own face on a giant screen.
And I remember that I could have called the police, and I didn’t.
I won the competition. But I think that was the part I’m actually proud of.