Skip to content Tom stared at the screen.
“She came to our house.”
“I know.”
“She asked us to keep the noise down.”
“I know.”
And then I understood.
Lisa had never come over to complain.
She had come over to find out whether we knew.
Her nervousness at the door hadn’t been discomfort about confronting a neighbor.
She had been testing us.
When I told her we had been away that weekend, she realized we had no idea anyone had been using our yard.
Her complaint had been a cover.
She had been checking whether they had been caught.
Tom shut the laptop.
“We need to decide what we’re going to do.”
I nodded.
Because this had clearly been happening for far longer than one evening.
—
We considered confronting Jim and Lisa immediately.
We had video evidence.
We could walk next door, show it to them, and demand an explanation.
But I knew exactly what would happen.
They would apologize.
They would say they thought we wouldn’t mind.
They would claim it started innocently.
And within a few uncomfortable weeks, we would return to waving politely across the driveway.
That didn’t feel adequate.
They hadn’t used our hot tub once.
They had apparently been doing it for almost a year.
They brought food.
They brought drinks.
They played music.
They were comfortable enough to treat our backyard like an extension of their own property.
They had stopped worrying about being caught.
Tom and I made two decisions.
The first was simple.
He installed an automatic lock on the backyard gate that could only be opened using a code from our side.